In Another World: History Is Written By The Victor
by Super Lizard
Summary: Second in the IAW series. As before, this is an AU with the role of the villain changed. In this case, it picks up at the end of the second Hellboy film- Nuala makes a different choice and rewrites history. COMPLETE.
1. The end of the beginning

-1In Another World: Hellboy II

Alternate Ending / Universe

Author's Note: Even I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. Ah well. Hopefully it will be one of those rare stories I finish!

--

Prologue: In which everyone lives happily ever after.

"Kill me. You must. I will not stop."

"Sorry. I win. You live." He turned his back.

Scruples abandoned for the cause, his hand closed around his knife. He staggered to his feet and moved forward.

Pain exploded in his hand, and rivers of blood flowed and fell from his palm to create a lake on the stone floor. Nuada ground his teeth, making no sound, not surrendering the knife until the wound opened his veins from his palm to the middle of his forearm. As it clattered to the floor, the prince grasped his arm and sucked in a breath, holding it. He felt his pulse thunder, the adrenaline of the fight pushing his lifeblood out faster. He saw the edges of his vision blur and dim, and he raised his gaze to his sister, where she stood on the platform with her knife in her arm. Betrayed, he swayed dizzily, then lurched forward.

The red demon caught him, holding him for a moment.

"It is either us, or them," he whispered. "Which holocaust will you chose?" As the darkness threatened him, he let his head fall forward, brow resting on the demon's shoulder. Why was such a wound causing so much trouble? He did not hear Nuala cry out after the initial cut, and she was steady on her feet when he saw her.

His dear sister was forcing all of the pain and sensory ill-effects of the wound through the link to him, and she did not keep her share. She allowed him to do it a few times during battle, and it saved his life. The least he could do, he supposed, was return the favour now.

Hellboy lowered him to the ground and set him on his back. Liz was at their side, kneeling to bandage the wound.

Dizzy, Nuada swatted at her hands. "I have more blood in me than she has in her. Attend her first."

"Abe is with her," she spat. "Hold still, you pointy-eared little shit."

He found he had no reply to that. Instead, he lay still and concentrated on staying awake. He had to know what was to happen to he and his sister, now.

Liz tore strips of cloth from her pants, shaking the dust out and using them to wrap around Nuada's arm. She made it a point to avoid being gentle, wrenching his arm straight and synching the cloth tightly around it.

He bit back a wave of nausea, vision swimming. He closed his eyes and suppressed a tremor. When he opened his eyes again, his beloved sister and the fish of her dreams stood behind them. Nuala had no eyes for him, no gaze of sympathy, no apology. The nausea returned full-force, and he clenched his teeth to avoid removing the contents of his stomach all over Liz.

"Guess we have to make sure he is looked after properly," Hellboy muttered, glowering at the elf. "We can let the Bureau do that."

The Bureau? He raised his good hand and grasped Elizabeth's hand firmly. "And Nuala?"

Red drew back his right hand to deliver a pounding for the offence of grabbing his woman, but a gesture from Liz prevented him.

"Nuala and I were thinking that we might find time for each other outside of a… professional relationship," Abe offered. "We thought perhaps we might travel, starting with Ireland."

"Abraham will keep good care of me," she added coldly.

"The best," he punctuated without her chill tone.

Nuada accepted this. "Good. I dare say he will."

"That mean you're leaving the Bureau?" Hellboy asked.

"It does," Abe shared a look and a smile with Nuala.

"Good. Me too." he grunted. "Liz, let's stay here. There's plenty of room to grow, for us, and for the baby."

She smiled a rare bright smile, and tucked her arm in his. "Bab_ies_. And we can live wherever you want. I'll go anywhere with you. "

He blinked in shock for a moment, then grinned widely and swept her up into a full hug. "Babies? Two? We're definitely staying here, now! I'll build us a house and a fence and stuff to climb on and this is going to be great!"

Nuala shared another look with Abe, holding his hand gently.

"We could all stay here in Ireland," Abe said quietly. "There's a world here, for those who are… different. Plenty of space to grow for all of us."

Red grinned at them. "Well, how bout that. Okay. We need to make sure this pointy-eared ninja is locked up properly, then we quit and run away to our own little patch of the green isle?"

"Yes," Abe agreed.

Liz beamed at him.

And that's what they did.

--

Chapter One:

The Prince's Madness

There was a time when Prince Nuada Silverlance wanted to live. This was no longer that time.

For the first few days, he paced his cell, testing it for weaknesses. The food they brought to him was revolting-- their meat was days old, cut with horrible things and cooked far too long. Their bread was sickly sweet and insubstantial, and on their vegetables and fruit he could taste the putrid chemicals used to grow and process them. He tried at first, but it twisted his insides and he could not keep it down. He could hardly stand their water, but it sustained him for weeks. Finally, his system began to acclimate a little, and he could keep down some of the vegetables-- but it took effort. His discipline only kept him alive.

His inability to take food had a predictably adverse effect on his ability to heal. In any other circumstance, it would take a healthy male elf a week to recover from such a brutal wound; however, his weakness did not permit this. The wound became infected, and the human doctors treated it with a derivative of a mould, which began to grow in his blood. The doctors thought this marvellous, and harvested the new penicillin from his blood through a machine, even as it ate away at his natural defences and made him ill. If they had not been so interested in his blood for this reason, Nuada was sure no one would have noticed him suffering.

Elves live for a very long time. Elves only need to eat once every few days to stay strong and healthy. Elves thrive in the sun and the forest, can see in all but the purest darkness, love music and dancing, love life and living things.

Nuada supposed he was no longer an elf. He was some wretched thing, confined to the fluorescent lights of a man-made box without enough room to stretch out his legs, without enough room to exercise or walk. In the course of a few months, he withered and became, if possible, paler than he had ever been. His nails and hair grew long and unkempt.

When his sister visited last, he had been a fourteen-stone force of nature. Then she went so far away the link between them faded, and he was alone for the first time in thousands of years. The dreadful silence and the constant sickness of the man-made medicine in his blood drove him mad. By the end of the second year, he dropped to nine-stone, and spent a great deal of his time folded on the tiny, hard mat they provided to him as a bed. The useless blanket provided little comfort, and the constant electric light burned his eyes to dimness.

After five years, the begging began. At first, it had been in English, then in French, then in a slew of human languages, and finally he begged in Elvish, not knowing any more where he was.

"Please, clean water. Water from a stream and not plastic. Water which is the tears of heaven, and not the blood of earth. A drop. Only a drop, please."

"Please, the sun. Show me the sunlight, let it warm me. It is so cold here, and I am so sick. I need the sun."

"S'vous plait, pour me laisser se tenir et marcher. Mon corps fait mal avec le froid et cette maladie."

"Misericordia, un foglio da un albero reale, un foglio di erba o un fiore da un campo bruciato con cemento."

"Mercê, o som dos pássaros. A canção da terra quietted pelos pés do homem."

"Anarion gwanno. Gurth ne am nin. Anarion… gwanno."

_Please just let me die._

The wound on his arm wound not heal properly. The human doctors did surgery after surgery to correct it, but it only stiffened worse with pain and atrophy, and they would not let him have the herbs he knew would cure it. Instead, the ache ate into his shoulder, then his neck, then his chest, then his heart. He screamed until he had no more voice.

Finally, after five and one half years-- a blink in the age of elves-- Prince Nuada Silverlance collapsed, helpless, wasted, weak. He closed his eyes and, though he continued to breath, he did not open them again. That evening, he was transferred to a private room in the Bureau's hospital, where he remained, as still as death.

--

Hellboy, Nuala, and Abraham secured special accommodations through Johann Krauss to travel to the United States by air, with the intention of visiting friends at the Bureau and checking up on Nuada in his resort confinement. Elizabeth remained at the Ireland house to look after the kids-- both of them healthy, spirited six-year-olds with fire in their hearts and at their fingertips. They made their parents very proud.

Nuala (now the elven High Queen) and Abraham were unable to have children due to their unique physiologies. With this concern, they had approached several respected members of the elven community. All of the answers were the same-- Elven children were rare as it was. Seek an elvish father or an ichthyo sapien mother. There was no other way. Abe hoped to raid his old library and spend time with old colleagues, and Nuala wished dearly to see her brother again, as well as to hunt through the North American underground community for a male elf with a healthy dose of understanding.

Red wanted to visit the grave of his father and to see his cats. Also, to kick the shit out of Nuada again, if the opportunity presented itself.

As the plane approached the shore of Greenland, trouble began. When the link to her brother re-established itself, Nuala cried out sharply, then clamped one hand over her mouth. Wordlessly, Abe reached over and put his hand on her back; he gave a yelp of dismay and pulled his hand back, startled.

"What, what is it?" Red demanded.

Blue rubbed Nuala's back comfortingly, but could do nothing.

"An illness. My brother is deathly ill, and he is in great pain. Our link, he has abandoned it." Nuala did not suffer from the loss of their link, as she had replaced it immediately with one between she and Abe. The silence she heard from her brother echoed like the silence of a corpse interred in a cathedral, but for the waves of blinding pain that flowed freely from him. She reached through the link and sent him her strength, offering to take some of the pain, wanting to know what was wrong.

The link remained silent, but did not break. She felt numbness and shock through it, then wordless fear. There was deep love, too, as well as forgiveness, which she did not understand. The pain was gone, however.

_Let me carry some of this burden with you, brother._

The response was confused, raving. _Love sister, protect sister, dear sister, keep away, cool hands on fevered brow, have you seen the sun kill himself? A drop of heaven-tears, a drop only, I burn in your world of hate. Trees, where are the trees, so far away from me, I wither, I wither and I die. Oh Gods, I cannot see Your faces, I cannot feel Your will. Though my forest is ash and dust, in its graveyard, dwell I must, til once again, bless'd and strong-- _Pain through the link blinded her momentarily, and she whimpered until it curbed sharply. _Mustn't share, dear sister, it will drive you mad as I. A drop only, only one from the tears of heaven, give me respite, give me death. The Gods turn away from this earth._

She sent feelings of comfort, of safety to him, and felt the link tremble like a caged bird. _I am only hours away from you. We will help you. Hold on, my brave brother._

_It is too late. I am not an elf anymore. Go far from here, so when I die you will live. When I die. I want to die. Fly away, little bird, dear sister. For the bird song, I sigh. There is no more music in this world. Why won't they let me die?_

Her cracked her heart in two, and she began to weep quietly. "Hurry, please hurry, they're hurting him!"

Abe's hands stilled on her back, and she felt him trying to relieve her fear and tension. Unable to do so, he turned to Hellboy. "We need to be there already. I believe this aircraft is capable of a higher speed?"

"It is when I drive," he answered quite seriously, and moved towards the cockpit. There were the sounds of the pilot and copilot protesting, the impacts of a slight scuffle, then the pilot scurried into the cabin looking frightened.

Abraham, who would usually sigh a long-suffering sigh at such antics, welcomed the change as the plane tilted a little and accelerated.


	2. For the Birdsong, I Sigh

-1Two.

Notes: Don't worry, Igbo gal, I don't specialize in happy endings. ;)

Websandwhiskers-- interesting… I'll try not to disappoint.

AriannaMalfoy, maer hin. That is indeed Sindarin.

--

"You can't just walk in here and expect to see the most classified prisoner we have," Manning ranted, following them down the hall. Hellboy kept him distracted while Abraham and Nuala hunted for the correct room. "You have to apply for clearance with the hospital."

"The hospital?" Nuala demanded. The two rounded on him.

Manning stopped in his tracks. "Oh no. Abraham, no, get your hand away from-"

Too late. Abe spread his hand wide and flicked through Manning's thoughts like a librarian through a card catalogue. "He is in the hospital unit, floor six, second hall on the left, room 615."

They turned and marched away, Manning tailing them the entire way, chattering on about how they couldn't do exactly what they were doing. No one else tried to stop them; in fact, several agents even stopped to greet them and hold doors open for them, much to Manning's consternation.

Seven minutes later, they were on floor six, turning into the second hall. Manning stopped, and finally gave up. His voice took on a tone of pleading. "Please, just don't upset him. He's very fragile."

Hellboy stopped, knowing this manner of speaking-- that is to say, sincerity-- did not come easily to the man. He turned and stared him down. "Nuala says her brother's ill. What happened?"

"I don't know. No one knows. It started with vomiting, then became not eating, then his arm got infected and he got a fever." Manning pulled his roll of Rolaids from his jacket pocket and fidgeted with the wrapper. "They treated the infection, and did surgery on his hand a few times, but the fever never went away. He started speaking in tongues, talking about the tears of heaven, then he just… stopped moving."

Red advanced on him a couple steps, glaring.

"We're keeping him alive," Manning backed up a step involuntarily. "We didn't know if his dying would kill Miss Silverlance, as well."

Nuala and Abraham left him behind, driven by urgency. They made their way into the room, where the lights were dim and the pale prince lay, withered, attached to a bank of machines, multiple IV drips, and more tubes than Abe could quickly identify. Nuala gave a heartbroken cry and moved to her brother's side, slipping her hand into his.

Quietly, Abe stayed at her side, lending his support. Red and Agent Manning hovered in the doorway.

_Brother, I am here. We will protect you, now._

Relief flowed with the pain through their link. _Is this the end?_

Abe took the chart from the end of the bed and began reading. Slowly, he became more and more agitated, culminating with him hurling the clipboard across the room at the wall.

Unaccustomed to such violence from him, Manning retreated back to the hall. Even Red raised an eyebrow, but he said nothing.

Blue moved to the IV drip and detached the bag above the saline pouch, pinning the tube shut. He went about removing various tubes, then turned to the pump that filtered the penicillin from the prince's blood. With a few tweaks and toggles, he changed the settings to fit his wish.

"Water," Nuala requested sharply. "Water from the rain, not from pipes or plastic bottles. Real water."

Hellboy turned on his heels to obey, knowing from her tone that it was necessary.

She gripped the bed rail as another burst of pain passed from her twin. "He wants to die. You carried him to death's very bower, but will not let him pass the veil!"

Abraham touched her elbow gently. _These men cannot help us now._

She made a helpless, sorrowful sound. _We stopped him from killing all of mankind, now mankind punishes him thus._

"They thought letting him die would mean you die, as well," Abe defended softly, watching the monitors. "And now that we've returned, it just might."

She grimaced and sat on the edge of the bed, her hand still wrapped around that of her twin. "I did not bid him farewell when we left. I was so angry. I thought surely I would see him again." She turned her eyes up to Abe. "It is not commonplace for an elf to die. There are so few of us, and we do not spill each other's blood in vain."

_Go from here, dear one._

She ignored him, clenching his hand harder. _Hold. _

_Please, I don't want to hurt you._

_You've sliced me one too many times for that to be purely true._

Silence, and a pang of hurt, the kind in the heart instead of the physic.

She regretted thinking as much.

Hellboy reappeared with a metal flask. "Rainwater," he said. "Probably with a bit of rum in it. And we owe Honsinger some shitty rum."

Nuala took the flask from him and unscrewed the cap. At her thought, Abe was at the controls of the bed, raising the top until the prince sat, reclined slightly. She parted his lips with the flask and tipped it back, dumping rainwater into his mouth, then brought away the flask and held his mouth shut.

Nuada's throat worked for a moment, unsuccessfully, then his body protested weakly, as if to cough. _Oh brilliant irony, with both death and life so close, and unable to embrace either. Oh brutal hell._

"Gods have mercy," Nuala whispered, then worked her fingers on his throat in firm, downward strokes. "He's forgotten how to swallow."

After a few moments of limbo between choking and swallowing, Nuala's work had the desired effect. The water flowed down his throat, and the response was immediate: he made a thin sound, something like a whimper. The link between them flooded with desperate emotion. _Beautiful Singular Pure Hope-giving Please Mercy Beg You More Gods More Please Sweet Mercy_

She obliged, giving him water a mouthful at a time until the flask was empty.

Though he had no tears to weep, his breathing took on a hitched, sobbing quality.

She gripped his hand and wept for him. "Oh brother, what have they done to you?"

Abraham stood by, listening intently to his lover and scribbling on the patient chart. "It will take some time to heal. He requires many things the human world did not provide him these several years. We would like to petition for his release, into our custody of course."

Red surprised them all. "Damn right, they'll release him to us."

Abe smiled at him. "Thank you for your support."

"Excuse you, you're still not in charge here," Agent Manning objected from the doorway.

They all turned to stare at him coldly.

"But maybe it's best he be with his own kind," he conceded immediately. "I'll draw up the terms. Your custody only, Abe; I trust your judgement."

Blue rolled his eyes as the man left. "That's one less obstacle, at least."

"What do we need to do?" Red asked, oddly compliant in the face of such horrors. "Is he… can he ride in the plane with us, or will that be too upsetting, or… what?"

"In his current state, travelling may kill him," Blue answered quietly. "But staying here certainly _will _kill him. As soon as Nuala approves, we move him."

_We're taking you away, brother._ Nuala told him. _We're here to take you away._

She felt him smile in her heart. _Thank you._

Within an hour of the last of the penicillin evacuating his system, the prince's fever faded like a bad dream. His skin lost much of its unhealthy blue tone, appearing more like over-dry white clay. It was, at least, an improvement.

When Red returned from the Goblin market with a bag full of goodies, Nuala reached for his mind to wake him. _Brother, the demon has brought food for you. Wake, so that you may eat._

She felt his uncertainty and fear, but his breathing caught, then he opened his eyes. He could not focus them. _Why do you take such care of me?_

She gave him a half-smile, then gestured to Hellboy for the bag. In it, she found vegetables, fruit, and elven-bread. "You have done well!" she praised, breaking the heavy bread into small pieces and rolling them slightly with her fingers before placing a piece in her brother's mouth.

His eyes fluttered, and his grip loosened for a moment, but with a sigh he worked the bread until he could swallow. _Sweet beautiful mercy. Thank the demon for me, sister, he has done more for me than he can ever know._

"He is very, very grateful to you," she told him.

Red scratched the back of his head. "Uh, yeah. No problem. Guy's gotta eat, right? This isn't Gitmo. "

She slowly provided him bread until half the small loaf was gone, then she stroked his brow lightly. "No more for now. Your body will reject it. You will hurt soon from this, but it will give you strength."

He sighed and managed a tiny quirk of a smile. _You too have done more for me than you can ever know._

_Open your mind to me, so I might understand what has happened these last five years._

He closed his eyes without complying, drifting into a silent sleep.

She pursed her lips and squeezed his hand, then turned to the others. "This night will be difficult for us both. You do not have to stay if you do not wish, but… I would appreciate the company of friends."

Abe smiled softly and placed his hand on her shoulder.

"We wouldn't leave if you told us to," Red assured her.


	3. For the Rain, I Die

-1Chapter Three: Before the Dawn

The night was, as predicted, difficult. Nuada's body seized around the unfamiliar substance-- food-- and long-dormant systems churned in protest. His skin burned anew, and he wretched violently. Whenever he finished emptying his stomach, Nuala obliged to fill it again with more bread and bits of fruit. This cycle repeated itself six times before the prince could keep his lunch long enough to process it. He drank nearly a bucket of rainwater, which kept Red busy with hiking up and down the stairs to collect more.

Just before dawn, Nuada fell silent, and was very, very still. Nuala leaned heavily on the side of the bed, the blood draining from her face and her heart beating slowly. She swayed, then fainted; Abe caught her and lifted her to the bed, where she lay beside her brother, similar in countenance though he looked dead while she looked merely deathly ill.

Their minds met in the void of unconsciousness. Nuada did not hold on to her presence, nor reach for a stronger hold on life. Nuala, however, held on with all her soul.

_Brother, I cannot hold you for long. Please do not let go._

A quiet sigh from the other side of the link, and a feeling of listlessness.

_Do not die. The world will be lesser for it._

She felt him stir, then fall still again.

_I wish to bear children soon. I cannot conceive except by an elven male. There is no one in this world I know, love, and trust more than you._

There was a long, awkward silence between them, and more than ever she hated not knowing his thoughts. Then, a glimmer; the glimmer grew into a steady heartbeat, weak but tenacious. The heartbeat came with a rush of cool air into their lungs, and a dull awareness that, in the physical world, there were nurses and doctors hovering about them frantically.

An uncertain thought brushed her mind, asking for access. Even though his mind was closed to her, she let him into hers. It was a singular experience, having someone read her thoughts when she could not see in return; strange, but not frightening. Then another gentle thought, a thank-you, and he was silent again.

But he held on for her.

"It was a result of the shock," Abraham told Red, having unashamedly read the doctors' minds during the process. "They didn't revive them. They are not sure how it is that they are both stable again."

"Sounds like something your girl did," he deduced, fishing a cigar out of his pocket.

"Are you really going to smoke in a hospital?" he asked, though he knew the answer.

"Sure am."

"You are incorrigible." Abe planted himself in the chair beside the bed just in time to stand again as Nuala awoke.

She blinked back tears, but did not explain them. Instead, she smiled at Abe and sat up slowly, testing her balance so not to fall from the bed. They embraced.

When they separated, Abe stared at her in open shock. "You… asked _him?_"

She nodded quietly.

There was a _long _Awkward-Turtle moment. "_Why?_" But he already knew.

She held his hand gently and allowed their conversation to happen unspoken. _The devil you know? I know and trust him more than any other elven lord, and he is my brother. I love him._

"Whoa, whoa, wait," Red waved his 'normal' hand in the air, much like a child but for the cigar wedged between his first two fingers. "Asked him what? Asked him what I think she asked him?"

Abe nodded slowly.

He took a long puff, held the smoke for a moment, then blew it out his nose. "Whoa. Is that even legal? Won't the kids be all deformed or something?"

"No," Nuala explained. "Elves are so scarce, though we are the ruling species. Of the twelve noble houses present at the Beginning of All Things, there are three that remain. Because we are free of genetic deformities in our bloodline for many millions of years, there is no chance of the deformities common when human family mates. It is quite common in elven society for an elven woman to seek a male family member, other than her father, if it is her time to have a child and she is not married. Without such a custom, it would be impossible for our species to survive so long."

_Him?_ Abe repeated, irked by the idea that their worst enemy-- _one that tried to kill me, it should be noted_-- would be her choice.

"His blood is royal, and there are none who can say he is not… _was _not beautiful and strong."

"Actually, I could say he wasn't beautiful," Red interrupted, but was ignored.

"You and I will raise our child, keep it far from his madness." _I am ready now. It will be decades before I am ready again._

Abe flinched. What she thought was true; if she did not succeed in procreating soon, it would be another eighty years before they could try again. They wasted so much time trying to beget a child themselves, it was only time ticking away on her biological clock. _One might say, for an immortal, a biological astrological calendar. _

_It would be more appropriate, _she agreed.

Another long moment. _When?_

_As soon as he is strong enough._

_Did he answer you?_

_He is yet alive, so that is not a 'no.'_

Abe squeezed her hand, then released it. "That is that, then." Then he leaned forward slightly and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

She smiled, then turned her eyes down. "I do wish we could--"

"I know," he agreed, smiling sadly with her. "But this is what fate decrees." After a moment, he changed the subject. "The sooner we get him away from here, the better. As soon as he is strong enough, where is best to take him?"

Nuala thought for a long moment, considering. "There is a school of faerie healers in Edinburgh. We could go to Scotland. Elizabeth and the children could join us there; the underground city is extensive, much larger than the Goblin Market here. Anything and anyone he needs, we could find there."

"Then to Edinburgh we will go," Abe agreed. "I will speak to Johann about the best way to travel. As soon as you believe he will survive the trip, we will leave."


	4. Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

-4 -- Two steps forward, one step back.

"A sucking chest wound is just nature's way of saying, 'slow down there, chief.'"

-- A wise(ass) punk kid

I promise it gets happier soon. Less torture and more awkward moments.

--

Nuada's improvement was hard-fought but recognisable. Every day, he spent more and more time conscious, and rejected food less and less often. His pulse steadied on the third day, which seemed to relieve much of his pain. He regained his motor abilities in pieces, until at the end of the week he could move his limbs and grip his sister's hand with ease. His vision was slower to return; he seemed able to process movement, but nothing else, and his eyes did not focus at all. The dilation of his pupils was sluggish at its best, even when Nuala turned off the lights in the room and let in the sun through the window.

To the great concern of the nurse staff, Hellboy and Abe pushed the bed up against the wall to be closer to the window. When the sun came up, it shone brilliantly through the glass and washed over the ashen prince. Every day at dawn the light reached over the horizon and stretched out its golden fingers to warm him; in that early moment, the sun seemed to exist only to warm the prince, and with a smile and a sigh, the prince seemed to exist only to worship the sun.

It was at the end of the week that Nuala approved him as fit to travel. On a wheeled gurney, escorted by his three guardians, Nuada stayed conscious all the way from the hospital room to the plane. He drifted off sometime during the first hour of the flight, and slumbered deeply. Red, Blue, and Nuala took shifts monitoring him, though the compliment of equipment was considerably less extensive on the plane than in the hospital.

In the third shift, Red noticed a change in his breathing, and immediately awoke Abe by tapping him incessantly on the arm. "Abe. Abe wake up. Somethin's wrong with Prince Big-n'-Bad."

"Hm?"

"He's breathing funny. All scratchy and uneven."

Abe shot out of his seat and practically teleported to the other side of the cabin, where lay Nuada. "Did you try to wake him?"

"Yeah. Doesn't work." Red followed at a more even pace.

He waved to the seats where previously he lay. "Check on Nuala."

He hesitated, then turned back and nudged Nuala's shoulder gently. "Uh, sorry Nu, but… you have to wake up."

She stirred a bit and awoke slowly. "Red? What is wrong?"

"Your brother is breathing kinda funny, Abe is taking care of him but wanted me to check that you're alright. Are ya?"

She blinked, bewildered. "Yes. I don't feel anything from my brother."

Abe listened and prodded and monitored, trying to determine the cause of the issue and narrowing it quickly down to the lungs. "I need one hand please."

Red sprinted from the other side of the plane, Nuala following after. Under Abe's direction, they sat Nuada up and allowed him to hunch forward slightly. Abe pulled his arms forward then up, where he directed Red to hold them.

Feeling very silly, Red held both the prince's narrow wrists in his left hand, keeping them over his head. "What's the point of this?"

"It opens his rib cage and allows his lungs more room to expand. Nuala?"

"I don't feel anything from him at all; our bond is gone silent." She wrung her hands frantically, then moved to the head of the bed and planted her palms against her brother's back. "Left lung, two inches, anterior wall. Part of him just _isn't there._"

"What do you mean?" Red wondered.

"A part of the wall of his lung is gone. It's just a hole," Abe read from her mind with clear horror. "Ragged. It isn't bleeding internally because the lung is already half collapsed."

Red growled. "Shit. How does he just end up with a hole in his lung, just like that?"

"When I find out, I will tell you," Abe promised patiently. "But the sooner we get his lung working again, the more sure his chances of survival. We need a healer."

"We're already over Scotland, we should be landed in twenty minutes or so," he reported. "We're putting down just outside the city; it should be another half hour by car to the drop point at Cowgate."

"It's not going to be very dark. Please try to remain inconspicuous, there will be many people about."

Red rolled his eyes. "Don't worry about me, fish man. Oh, and there's the half-dead elf we're hauling about, that's bound to raise a few eyebrows."

Abe cut a sharp look at him in chastisement.

The pilot's voice came over the intercom speaker. "We're descending to land. Anyone not directly involved in whatever it is you all are doing, please be seated and put on your seatbelts. It's going to be a wee bit rough."

Abe nodded for Nuala and Hellboy to sit, and took over the task of steadying Nuada. The landing was indeed bumpy, but Abe had no trouble maintaining his own balance-- until he began hearing the echoes of Nuada's mind through his sensitive palms. Direct contact with the elf should have registered as a bad idea, he at least should have concentrated on _not _listening; but Nuada's wrists felt so much like Nuala's that Abe's mind practically fell open.

By the time they were on the ground, Abe was more than willing to pass Nuada to Red and retreat to his lover. Nuala sympathetically set a palm against his back, knowing what he heard. She smiled a sad smile for them both. "It will be better, soon. Either he will live, and heal, or he will die, and be reborn. All things pass."

"Strange words from an immortal," Abe replied, slipping an arm around her waist tenderly. _If he lives and heals, how much of his madness will disappear with his pain?_

Nuala did not answer, because she did not know.

Red lifted the prince easily and held him practically in one arm. Without something clever to lighten the mood, he was entirely outside of his comfort zone; this showed in his grim silence.

Nuada wheezed painfully and gripped Red's forearm for reassurance that he was not being thrown. The last time Red grasped the pale prince, it had been in violence; they shared the moment of déjà vu, awkwardly meeting eyes for a moment. Even without a mental link, the question was clear.

_I win, _Hellboy had said. _You live._

This moment passed. Nuada relaxed in his hold and adjusted to the sensation of being carried as the warmly lit interior of the plane turned into the damp chill of a Scottish night. The metal cabin walls had dampened the sounds of the earth. Now, in the open air of the island Balor called home, the voices of all the natural world sang their quiet, constant song. The nearby mountain had a whalesong tone, slow and deep, sounding in his elven bones. The insects and frogs in their gracefully coarse summer chorus were more beautiful than any artificial symphony, manmade or even elven. The night birds and bats, their wings made sounds so quiet a human would not hear them, but the whistle of feather edge against the wind was sweeter than flutes, and the answering whispers of the trees-- ah, the trees!

Nuada gripped Hellboy's arm again, eyes closing and lips pulling back in a grimacing smile. _Sister, do you hear them--! Oh how lovely, how is this world so glorious, do you hear home? Do you hear the night as it sings, the waves of the ocean so very close, so very close, like mother's hand, do you smell the ocean? The mountains are singing, they yet sing, I thought they were silent, I thought we all had died--!_

Nuala brushed her hand over her brother's brow as they piled into the taxi, but remained attached to her husband's side. The link between her and her brother cracked, weighted down with a mad joy so acute it was painful. She closed her eyes and buried her head against Abe's shoulder, weeping again but feeling her brother's soul waking, his heart beginning to beat again. It was wonderful, and it hurt.

Abe understood; he always did. It was the one thing she loved most about him, and he understood that, too. He held her gently, stroking her hair and letting her share the emotions that otherwise might have broken her. He met Red's eyes across the cramped taxi.

Hellboy had his feet pulled up, but his legs still occupied most of the floor space and then some. Nuada was draped across his lap, uncaring for physical comfort as he abandoned himself to the song of the land. His wheezing had grown more disturbing to the ear, adopting a kind of wet sound that was herald of ill news for any creature. Across from him, Blue and Nuala huddled on the seat, and behind him the cabbie drove without speaking to them, already briefed on where to go.

"I know I'm not in the little psychic love triangle," Red grunted, shuffling uncomfortably, "but I just gotta say… this is really, _really _fucked up. Nuala, I-- Nuada… I'm really sorry. I didn't know they were going to… to do this. Or I never woulda given him to them."

Nuala and Abe smiled simultaneously that same sympathetic smile. "It's not your fault," she told him. "I know you did what you believed was best. We were, all of us, deceived. Now it is time to make it right."

His expression darkened ominously. "Yeah. Yeah, it is that."

The taxi arrived at the caves on Cowgate, just beneath the George-IV bridge. Somewhere in the old store rooms, the driver told them, was the entrance to the Underground realm. Parts of it were built by trolls, and then built atop that were the homes of humans, which then were built atop by more humans and left forgotten under the city. Now, only the occasional haunted tours company and sometimes the odd theatre venue ever took to stay there. The Fae of the area made quite certain that all knew who belonged where, though, by haunting the place thoroughly by trick and magic. The driver let them out when the street was clear, tipping his hat to them and driving off into the thick har of the Edinburgh night.

The lot of them scrambled into the old storerooms as quickly as possible to avoid too much attention-- in a country with one security camera for every three citizens, being seen in Britain was never a task of shutting up a single person. And without the support of the Bureau, Hellboy and his current company simply did not have the resources to cover their tracks.

Not that Hellboy had ever been particularly concerned about covering his tracks. But now, he was carrying an elven prince who was through flirting with Death, and was now making serious advances on the Grim Reaper. The mental image, while amusing, drove him to march a little faster into the musty caves.

They all had to duck a bit to prevent knocking their heads on the low archways where doors might once have been. The smell became damper and mouldier as they descended staircase after staircase into a room where the scent of humans was only a few weeks old. Indeed, there were still metal screws and bolts on the floor.

"This must have been a theatre venue like our driver mentioned," Abe noted, attempting to distract his lover from the madness and pain of her brother. He brushed a wad of gaffer's tape out of their way with one foot as they passed. "Look."

Red snorted. "You'd think a lot of unwashed hippies would at least have a little more respect for their surroundings."

"Says the man who used to throw his beer cans in the river-- until I started throwing them back," Abe challenged good-naturedly, relieved as he felt a little glow of amusement from his partner.

Nuala pulled them off to one side, past a row of stalactites dripping with rainwater from the surface-- the storerooms were indeed old enough to have collected the architectural trappings of natural caves. "This is it," she announced, then spoke words in elvish that neither of her surface-born counterparts understood. True to her command, the wall shuddered and pulled back, stones separating in an uneven line and pulling back, arranging themselves into a proper doorway.

"With troll doors like this," Abe wondered, "Who needs goblins?"

Nuala flinched and hesitated, a hand seeking her brother just as he uttered a smothered cry. By way of explanation, she told the others, "We knew a troll who helped to built these caves. They are as familiar to us as our personal rooms. We played in these tunnels as children, and he hid here for a time during his exile."

"Maybe when he's healed some, you two could visit--"

"He's dead," Nuada whispered, but he may as well have screamed it.

"You killed him," Nuala told him even more softly.

"Wha-- oh. OH. Oh god. I'm sorry." Red's knees felt weak, and he felt like the biggest asshole in all the world. "I didn't know, I--"

"You were enemies then," Nuada breathed. "On the opposite sides of a battle unfair to you both. To us all." It was the most lucid thing he said in months, and the most peaceable thing he'd said in centuries. Its significance was not lost on Nuala, who smiled on him mentally and gave him all the warmth her heart could spare.

It was, however, lost on Hellboy. "No battle is fair. This war was wrong. I treated the troll like a creature, but I spared you like a man."

"A human raised you," he reasoned, pausing to push a little blood out of his mouth with a weak hiccup. "I look more humanoid than Wink, and therefore you treat me more like a human. Humans fear what they do not understand, and hate what they fear--" he would have said more, but something in him seized, cutting off his words and his breath. Instead, he coughed and shuddered, gold eyes closing to the world he could barely see.

Trusting them to understand the need for haste, Nuala walked so quick as to be running, through the familiar tunnels, footfalls echoing in the stone corridors and in her long memories. Every sound and smell led the way, the flagstone carrying her feet where she needed to go. Though the healer's home was not in the same tunnel, nor even the same sector as when she last visited a hundred years before, she found their way to the right door without doubling back once. She whispered a thank you to the spirit of Wink in the stones, and pressed open the door to the healer's home as she announced their arrival.

"Please, your help for my brother; he is gravely ill and dying."

A wrinkled crone in feather-light white robes floated from the back room, looked them over with some surprise, then bowed low. "Your highness-es. Please, place him upon the cushions here, and I will do my best."

Red crossed the room in a single step, kneeling and very carefully placing the broken prince on the pile of cushions that dominated the centre of the healer's workspace. He moved back a bit, but did not stand. Nuala sat beside her brother, holding his hand and suffering with him as he gave up his blood by the mouthful. Abe knelt at her side, a hand on her shoulder.

The healer spread her palms flat and held her hands horizontal, moving them over the prince in flowing sweeps. "Human poison," she noted. "This is human sickness, long entrenched in him. He surrendered to it, but now he fights it again? The seat of his breath and the walls of his organs are worn, disappearing. He is alive but has no right to be."

Hellboy was about to demand the healer talk straight and tell them if she could help or not, but a movement from the ground caught his attention. Nuada stopped coughing up blood, and was lying very still; however, his breathing was stronger than it had been, and seemed to improve as the moments passed.

"There is a strength in him," the healer said after awhile, her hands moving closer to his ribs and pausing there for a longer moment before continuing on. "And also a great madness. With patient care he may live, but…" _It may be for the best that he does not,_ she did not say, but they heard it in her voice.

"Patience, we have," Nuala said more to her brother than to the healer.

She nodded once, slowly. "Very well. He ought remain here for a week at the least, then take him home and keep him safe on your island until he is strong again. He is deficient in the elements of earth, water, and fire; the wind alone is a fickle thing to sustain him. I will stabilize him until he can begin healing." She was silent a moment, then added very carefully, "I cannot heal his mind."

Nuala used her pocket kerchief to mop away the blood drying on Nuada's face. "With so many years, there may be none but the Mother who can heal such scars."

The healer did not respond.


	5. War Crimes

Notes-- A little more Gaelic and a lot of references, all for you, Ariana. Er… both Arian(n)as, I suppose. J

Igbogal-- I appreciate your faithful reviews. The last one caused me to laugh tea directly up the back of my throat and almost clear through my nostrils. Thank you. Awkwardness aplenty, but there's still two more chapters at least before things get interesting; first, we need to know why Nuala isn't looking more diligently for an unrelated male!

Public Service Announcement: This author does not condone incest, inbreeding, or getting touchy-feely with your family. IT'S WRONG. DON'T DO IT. Move to Mississippi, where it's societally acceptable to be creepy.

--

5-- War Crimes

Hellboy was completely unable to sleep that night. A hundred things haunted him, so he tried to walk away the voices like he usually did; in the tunnel, his thoughts only seemed to echo louder. His father, the human who protected him and taught him, worked for a Bureau that did this to a prisoner. The Bureau belonged to the United States, and that meant his country was responsible for it, as well. He himself had turned the prince over to the Bureau-- it had been his idea. They had all gone along with it. They were all responsible. As he walked, he spotted all manner of creatures living peaceably (for the most part) in the caves. The tiny houses were no bigger than rooms, shaped by humans long before the days of the plague. As he went farther underground, the rooms grew larger and grander, the houses more impressive, the shops more contained, and the residents more sociable. Many were out in the tunnels chatting with each other in a hundred ancient languages, laughing, sharing bottles of wine and bowls of strange fruits, sitting in chairs that looked suspiciously like human lawn chairs. It was so familiar. If the occupants were human and the scene above ground, it might have been any small town anywhere.

That wasn't entirely true; the architecture was too grand, too old, and too solid. The walls were built of granite and decorated with relieves and carvings depicting scenes and stories he could not identify. A nagging part of him felt he should know the stories.

Then he rounded a corner and came face-to-face with a troll at least three times his size. Instinctually he stepped back, then remembered himself and gave a forced but friendly nod. "Hello," he greeted, the only word of the troll language he could think of on short notice.

The troll, a great blue troll, gave a friendly smile-- he thought it was a smile, at least-- and nodded back, continuing on his way.

_I treated the troll like a creature, but I spared you like a man. _His own voice haunted him. He stopped his walk, closing his eyes and letting his chin fall to rest on his chest. _I should know as well as anyone that looking like a monster doesn't make you one._

What had the Bureau shrink called it-- 'dehumanization and demonization.' He'd been ordered to see a therapist after the death of his father. He didn't actually do much in the way of therapy with the bitter little man, but they'd made excellent drinking buddies. Red had called him Doc out of juvenile affection. Back then, in the depths of the bottle, Doc told him the Bureau did a lot of really terrible things, but he hadn't believed it.

Because he hadn't seen it. Not in a way that made him understand.

A tug at his jacket pulled him from his dark reverie; a gnome stood at his feet, staring up at him fearlessly and demanding his attention. "Hey pal," he said in Fae Common, a language Red learned by necessity and spoke nearly every day for the last five years. "You look like you could use a drink."

"Could I ever."

The gnome gestured to him and led him back to what amounted to an underground yard in front of a stone house. The area was lit by floating faerie lights; a table surrounded by a handful of adult gnomes sat by the door, its top covered in mugs and pitchers mingled with canisters and pots of black powder. At the food of the table there was a mess of gnome children playing some or other game at the foot. The gnome who greeted Hellboy gestured for him to sit near the table, and poured him a drink.

The mug was not as ridiculously small as it could have been, but was still fairly tiny for the demon. The gnomes took no notice of that.

"I'm Danji," the first gnome told him, pouring a new round for everyone while he was at it. "That's Creidhne, his wife Lenna, and my wife Yuljia. Two of those floorrats belong to Yuljia and I-- the ugly ones are by Creidhne and Lenna, and the clumsy one is the neighbour kid."

The children all chorused, "Hello, sir," politely, then turned on Danji. "I'm not ugly, that's only Yukka!"

"Shut up, no I'm not!"

"Are too."

Hellboy couldn't help but smile as they squabbled, obviously knowing that for the moment they were the centre of attention. "My friends call me Red," he returned, very carefully shaking hands with the smaller creatures around the table. "Thank you for your kindness."

"We know who you are," Creidhne told him bluntly, filling a canister with black powder and tamping it down. "After the coup settled, Her Highness announced your identity and your pardon."

He wrinkled his brow in confusion. "Yeah, in New York."

"Word gets around," Danji assured him. "Now the omnipresent 'They' are saying you wandered into the caves yesterday with Her Highness, Her Highness's consort, and carrying the Dead Prince."

Red could hear the capital D that made the adjective a title. "The omnipresent 'They' are perceptive little buggers. All of that is true except the 'Dead' part. Nuada isn't dead. Not yet, anyway."

Amongst the adults, there was an immediate shift in mood from cordially sociable to tangibly relieved. Lenna even reached over to grasp Creidhne's hand. "What news do you have of His Excellency?"

"He's very sick. The healer is doing her best."

"Airmeid is the best," Lenna assured everyone confidently. "If we are to have a king again, she will bring him back for us."

"Whoa wait, a king? I thought Nu-- _Queen _Nuala-- married Abe." He more than thought it. He had been there when it happened.

Lenna stared at him as if he were stupid. Creidhne politely turned his attention back to the canister of powder.

"The wise Abraham is the Queen's consort, not the king. Only an elf of a noble family may be High King. Right now, the court recognizes His Eminence Breas as king, but…" Danji leaned forward to speak in a low voice to Red alone. "He is not a charitable king. He is a cold soul."

"Fomorian," Creidhne spat in a low voice.

The women exchanged glances, then stood up from the table together. "Hey kids," Lenna called to them. "Go make trouble at the playground. When the street torches are out, I want you back in the house, hear?"

The kids gathered their toys and bounded off down the street, chattering amongst themselves without a burden or care. The women collected the empty mugs and pitchers, leaving the half-full one and three mugs on the table as they went inside.

"Politics is a dangerous subject these days," Creidhne noted, tapping black powder into another canister. "It is not always safe to speak freely."

"You would be safest if you didn't to speak much of our Dead Prince," Danji advised him casually, dropping his finished can-sized explosive into a bin under the table. "However, we thank you for your role in his current state. It is for the best that he is Dead." Again, a subtle emphasis on the word 'dead' that caught Hellboy's ear.

He nodded and finished his drink, wanting to ask about Breas and the Fae political structure, but unable to bring himself to put the friendly strangers in any more peril than they volunteered for.

"You seemed troubled. You wanna talk about it or are you going to brood and leave us wondering?"

Red gave them a half-hearted smirk, but it quickly fell. "I… I was the one who gave the one we're not talking about to the humans. I had a chance to kill him, but I didn't take it, and I thought I was being merciful-- but I am responsible for the death of a troll. I never met him except in that fight, and now he's dead. I killed him like an animal because I thought I was fighting an animal."

"You were raised by humans, 'They' say," Danji observed, filling his glass with the last of the pitcher. "What can one expect?"

"How can you not hate me for that? Even _I _hate me for it." He knocked back half the mug, then thought to ask, "What's in this, anyway? This is better than any beer I've ever tasted."

The gnomes exchanged smirks. "It's like beer, but it's a lot stronger. Gnome lager is as strong as elven mead, though not quite as tasty."

"Or expensive," Creidhne agreed.

"We knew Master Wink personally," Danji told him, and it finally occurred to Hellboy that he might've just been lured into a very small, very gnomish trap. "He was an excellent soul, a warrior and a gentleman. His father was Lord Consul of the Edinburgh caves-- kind of like a mayor in the human world, except without being a completely slimy, corrupt lump of faeces. So, without being human. Master Wink helped build the expansions five decades ago, when King Balor-- Gods rest his soul-- hoped the hippy movement in the western human world would lead to a return of the treaty."

Creidhne snorted derisively.

"But there was hope, and hope spawns life. We had new life in the caves again, our women became mothers, and we made lives for ourselves. There were whispers in the corners that our Exiled Prince would return… All in vain." Danji tossed his finished explosive canister in the bin and started another. "Now our Exiled Prince is our Dead Prince, Balor is dead, and Breas is king. We will rot in these tunnels with only each other as light, and there is no one to hope will save us but a Dead Prince. At least our Queen provides for us."

The Fae alcohol seemed to have the opposite effect on Hellboy from human alcohol. When he had a few human drinks, all the world was fuzzy and he could forget about his problems until he sobered up; with the gnome lager, all his problems were clear and he could forget about the rest of the world until he sobered up. The focus was amazing, but it prevented him from considering things more than one at a time. _The gnomes want Nuada as king. Breas is king. Nuala is queen. Nuala lives because Nuada lives. Nuada lives right now, but they talk about him like he's dead. They must have to hide him from Breas. The only reason to do that is if Breas wants to remain king. Breas is an unpopular guy, so he must know the people will support Nuada over him. Breas sure sounds like a real dick. If he's king and Nuala is queen, and Nuala wants to have a baby, why doesn't she get with Breas? If even family members aren't off-limits for elves, that would be the logical choice. _

The gnomes remained silent, knowing that his mental gears were turning. No one knew gears better than gnomes, after all. Creidhne tossed another canister of explosives into the bin.

_Nuala must really hate him to choose Nuada. Or really love Nuada. Whatever. But if Nuala hates him, and Nuala likes _everybody, _really, he must be a real shit-head. If everyone wants Nuada as king, they must not know he's gone whacko yet-- well, more whacko than usual-- how is he supposed to be king if he's crazy? Shit. There must be a plan B. We've got to pull him out of this._

_Then again, he _did _try to destroy all of humanity. There is that. But if they treated him like that-- if they destroy entire races like the Fae say they do, if all they do is take, if it has always been that way, why is that so wrong? He was fighting in self-defence and defence of his people. Can't blame a guy for that-- especially when he's royalty, and it's kinda his job. And people are mostly bastards anyway. Except for Liz and father._

He remembered his father's murder and murderer. He remembered the Nazis in Germany and more than a handful of wars everywhere in the world. He remembered the way people treated his Liz. He remembered fighting in the Troll Market and killing a creature with a soul and thinking of him as a monster. He remembered the Bureau, with creature after creature locked away in four-foot by four-foot white-walled boxes with no sunlight-- how many of those creatures had souls? He remembered the way humans treated even each other, shooting, stealing, striking, insulting, cursing, hating and hating and hating-- but hey, that's the city, right?

He remembered standing on a failing neon sign, staring down his gun at a being more ancient than humanity, and choosing to destroy it while the prince sat on the rooftop nearby and offered him another path.

_Fuck. I'm on the wrong side._

He looked up at the gnomes, who politely pretended not to notice his prolonged silence. "Humans are dicks," he said bluntly.

"Aye," they agreed in unison, still tapping powder into canisters.

"I was a dick."

"Aye."

"You all deserve better than this world."

"Aye." Danji turned to him and raised his eyebrows expectantly. The expression reminded Hellboy of his father. "So, are you going to keep wandering around?"

"No. No, I've got something important that needs doing."

"You're damn right, you do."

Red stood up and brushed off his pants. "Thanks guys. And that lager is amazing."

"Sure is. Brewed by my great uncle in the Wicklow mountains."

He nodded his goodbye. "Let me know if there's ever anything I can do to repay you for your uh… guidance."

Creidhne smirked. "Try using it."

Red chuckled at his own expense and walked away, back to the healer's house. He would have to make a trip to Wicklow, whenever the chance presented itself. Liz and the kids might enjoy it, too. _Shit. Gotta call Liz. _ He filed the thought away, noticing how empty his arms felt. That thought led back to the most recent use for his arms, carrying the Dead Prince to safety. After the initial moment of shock, it had seemed the right thing to do; after all, the elf was hardly able to walk. He had an odd feeling of déjà vu about it, though; aside from the moral imperative and the practicality, it seemed that the prince had been helpless in his care before. _That just doesn't make any sense at all. This gnomish booze is tricky stuff._

Before long, he found his way back to the healer's house and boldly let himself in, going to sit on the edge of the cushions where the others still were. The healer was in the back rooms; he could hear her working herbs in a stone bowl. Abraham had fallen asleep leaning against the side of a proper chair. Nuala sat, dark-eyed with exhaustion but still forcing a smile, reading poetry out of a little blue book.

"Look to the blowing Rose about us-- 'Oh, laughing,' she says, 'into the world I blow. At once the silken tassel of my purse tear, and its treasure on the garden throw.' I sometimes think that never blows so red the rose as where some buried Caesar bled; that every hyacinth the garden wears dropt in her lap from some once lovely head. And this reviving herb whose tender green fledges the river-lip on which we lean-- Ah, lean upon it lightly! For who knows from what once lovely lip it springs unseen! For some we loved, the loveliest and the best that from his vintage rolling Time hath prest, have drunk their cup a round or two before, and one by one crept silently to rest." She paused, looking to her brother with a suddenly unreadable expression, watching intently.

Nuada lifted his ruined hand and set it against Hellboy's stony right hand, smiling a cracked smile. "You have returned, Dagdain."

In that moment, Red would have carried the elven prince through Hell.


	6. I Weep To Have What I Fear To Lose

-1Notes: The poetry Nuala read in the previous chapter was the Rubaiyat, a Persian bit of poetry by Omar Khayyam in 1120 AC-- you can find it here:

classics(dot)mit(dot)edu/Khayyam/rubaiyat(dot)html

Also, I estimate there are approximately ten people who have read all the way through to chapter five. Just to let me know you're reading, please drop an empty review, or one with a dot in it. Having an audience makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, which makes me write faster.

--

6 - I weep to have what I fear to lose

Liz arrived in a blaze of fury-- not literally, which was fortunate for the citizens of the Edinburgh caves. Red gave fairly decent directions for a change, so he was as fairly certain he was not the target of her anger. Unfortunate, as he was fireproof, and everyone else in the area was _not. _

"You travel all the way to the States and back, then drag the boys and I to Scotland for that pasty son of a faerie and a ten-titted tree rat!?"

He cleared his throat and took a quick look around for anyone who might have been offended by the comment; most of the citizens of the cave were hiding indoors, though, only watching out of cracked windows and from behind curtains. "Liz, if you could lower your voice a bit--"

"He tried to kill you, _and _Abe, _and _me, and all of humanity! He put a _spear in your chest_!"

"We've worked past it, look, please be calm, you're going to insult the locals."

She ignited. "I AM CALM."

"Liz!" he stopped in front of the healer's house and rounded on her. "Please. They… they hurt him, at the Bureau. Bad. He's dying. If he dies, Nuala could go too. And if she goes, Abe _will _die. We help one enemy, we save two friends."

Liz extinguished, concerned by the lack of conviction behind the word 'enemy,' and the implications of what he'd said about the Bureau. She had a temper, but she knew her husband's mind from his tone. "What do you mean, hurt him? Why would they do that?"

He pulled her into a hug and lowered his voice so their sons, who had seen their mother on a rant and were following at a reasonably safe distance, could not hear. "The same reason they hurt you, baby doll. They don't understand." It was nice to hold and be held, after being in the presence of pain for so long, so he held her long enough to convey that something was wrong. "Hey guys," he addressed his sons, still several metres down the hall. "Down that tunnel to your left there's a playground. Mom and I are going in here for a bit to do boring grown-up stuff. You should go play. There are other fae around, too, so you don't have to hide. Don't burn anybody!" he called the last after them.

Liz moved out of his arms and regarded him tolerantly. "I missed you."

"Missed you too, babe."

"How are Abe and Nuala getting along?"

"They're okay. Still as in love as ever."

"If we're not careful, they might start loving each other more than us."

"Hah," he scoffed, kissing her. "Not a chance." He hesitated. "This is… this is going to be a little shocking."

She raised an eyebrow sceptically. "Didn't I work with you for most of forever?"

"No, it's… well, you'll see. This isn't like anything we've seen. Maybe if the Bureau went to Guantanamo or something."

"That garbage truck would never make it down to the beach, let alone across the Gulf."

He stopped short, then chuckled. "God, I've missed you."

"You ready?"

"Am _I _ready?"

"You're the one freaking out about this," she pointed out.

He scoffed again, then caught her arm and tucked it in his. Without another word, he pushed open the door and led her into the main room.

Her anger and sarcasm drained out of her as she saw the limp form of a skeleton with bleach-white skin. The shadows of his eyes and the hollows where hollows ought not have been were cold enough to prevent any fire in her. She shivered and stared for a long moment, convinced she was seeing a corpse, but for the laboured breath that forced out the right side of his ribcage in an impossible stretch-- but not the left side. His right arm, twisted on itself in injury and braced as such to heal, seemed the gnarled branch of a weathered tree; indeed, with the texture of his skin as rough as it was, and the craggy nature of his form, the comparison was more than fitting.

At their feet, on a pile of cushions the colour of dried blood, lay a dying piece of ancient wilderness.

She went from Red's side to where Nuala sat on the edge of the unconventional sickbed and pulled her into a hug, stroking her hair in the traditional feminine gesture of comfort. "Hello, dearest. How are you holding up?"

Nuala surrendered tears into the fabric of Liz's hoodie, hugging her in return. "I am sorry. Hello, Elizabeth."

"Shh, shh, nothing to be sorry about," she assured her. She stared past to Abe, who nodded that he was alright, but extended a hand towards Nuala. "It's okay. It's going to be okay."

The healer joined them from the next room, staring for a long moment at the human who had invaded her home. "A human in the caves? In _my house?_ What audacity is this, to bring this creature here!"

"Hey! That 'creature' is my wife!" Red boomed at her.

"For her to touch elven royalty, after the pain her kind has caused--!"

"Liz, this is Airmeid, the healer," Abe introduced awkwardly. "Airmeid, this is Elizabeth Sherman."

"She is here at my behest," Nuala told her before she could object again.

Liz said nothing, but released her elven sister and sat back on her heels; her eyes were drawn back to Nuada the same way one might be unable to look away from a particularly brutal burn victim. He appeared awake, but he did not meet her eyes; it was a moment before she realized he could not.

Airmeid sat gracefully opposite of the human in her den and hovered over the elven prince protectively. After a moment more of wordless hostility, she spoke. "There is an issue of great importance I wish to discuss with my prince's guardians"--she pointedly did not look in Liz's direction-- "and I humbly recommend your highness" --she looked to Nuala-- "decides quickly, as the longer this will wait, the worse it will be."

"We will hear you," Nuala granted.

Airmeid passed a hand over Nuada's face; his breathing evened, and his eyes closed. "His right arm must be removed. I believe I can save all the way to the elbow, but from his elbow is eaten with the human poisons."

Liz's gaze snapped up at Red, who could only give her a grim look of affirmation. Not understanding, she turned to Abe. "What--?"

Abe shook his head and mouthed, "Later."

"Time is, as I mentioned, of great importance; the longer this operation waits, the more of his arm he will lose."

"What decision is left for us to make, then?" Nuala asked, swallowing her apprehension and acting the perfect High Queen.

Airmeid's composure faltered, and she looked away for a moment. "His mind is already cracked and fragile; to remove his arm before it has repaired may destroy him in a way no healer can mend."

"Cracked?" Liz wondered aloud. _And this is different than before, how exactly? _she wanted to say, but did not.

Nuala's gaze turned to Abe, and they shared a mental moment before she turned her attention to Liz. "When I left with Abraham, I abandoned my bond to my brother. Even in his exile we could always feel each other if we tried. Because I am now bound to Abraham, I suffer no ill effects from this, but… I left my brother quite alone, and at the hands of humans." She fell silent and bowed her head; from Abe's immediate efforts to comfort her, it was clear she blamed herself. "When we returned, I reached out for him again and found him thus."

"So, then we bond him to someone else, the way you changed," Liz reasoned.

"Whoever is bound to the prince when his arm is removed," Airmeid explained slowly, "will also lose their arm. I cannot perform this surgery now, as it will hurt Nuala. Because they are not bound properly, I cannot say how much."

Abe held his wife protectively to him. Liz gazed in subdued horror at the mangled right hand in question. Then her husband surprised them all.

"Bind him to me." It was not his heroic voice. They all gazed at him in open shock. "I can certainly take it. And--" he lifted his stone right arm, "--I don't think this will come off by any knife, so I'm way less likely than any of you to lose an arm over it."

"Red," Liz began in warning.

"You have a wife and sons," Abe protested.

"And if this works, so will you," he answered. "Do it. I was the one who took him to the Bureau, I was the one who brought him back. Let me fix this."

Nuala pressed her lips into a fine line, pondering what could be done. "Sit beside me. I will show you what it is like." When he complied, she put her fingertips to his temples and pushed into his mind the time her brother nearly died in battle and was forced to put much of his pain through to her in order to remain conscious and fight his way to safety. "Do you still want this?"

He shuddered a moment, but did not reply until she sat back. "Yes. He needs me."

"His mind is a troubled place," Airmeid warned. "It will be maddening to you, as well."

"I've been around a few cracked people before, it doesn't scare me."

"Excuse us," Elizabeth grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. "My _husband _and I need to talk." She dragged him outside and closed the door after. "What exactly do you think you're doing? You could lose an arm. You could lose your mind."

He grimaced, responding carefully. "Remember when you asked if I would give it all up? If I would leave everything behind to be with you? This is it. I want to build a world worth living in for you and the boys. We live in the underground, now, too, and without him the underground will curl up and die."

"That's not true-- Nuala and Abe are taking care of it rather well."

"For now. Until--" he dropped his voice to a whisper, "Until Breas fucks it up."

Liz was silent.

"Heard of him?"

"Yes," she said sullenly. "He's not a great guy, but that's why we have Nu to balance him out. And he supports Balor's peace. Look, the whole world isn't our responsibility anymore-- above ground, or below ground. Just because I asked if you were willing to give it all up doesn't mean I want you to! I want _you, _not a man who's lost his mind to save the world. Fuck the world-- stay with me."

"I thought the same thing, but how much longer could we exist without the underground? What happens when Nuala can't compensate for the king? What about a world for our boys? When eradication knocks on the door in the form of a bigger, meaner army of people who hate us and fear us, we can't just run away. The Fae have been doing that for centuries, and it's killing them. It will kill us a lot faster. You and I would fight to protect our family if that army came to us in person, but without Nu-- without the Dead Prince and the support of his followers, we will eventually fall by the same hands that kept us under lock and key, that kept our friends in tanks and cages, that killed my father, that hated us for being a little different--"

"A little?" she interjected.

"Okay, a lot different. Look at what they did to him, Liz-- and those were just the ones we trusted. What will the ones we don't trust do to us? What will they do to everyone we know here?"

"Genocide," she answered. "A bit like _he _was trying to do."

"'Driven back to the caves' and 'genocide' are entirely different. And to be honest, I think they fucking deserve it. Hardship like that might teach them how to live better."

"It won't," she sighed. "We're all broken. We're so greedy we won't even give up the privilege of destroying ourselves. He's right about the holes in our hearts."

He smiled and embraced her. "Not all. Not you. You're different, and that's what makes you beautiful, babe. If you were a crazy, greedy, heartless, hateful bitch like most human women, I'd have thought way more carefully about us getting hitched."

She laughed and rested her face on his chest. "You didn't think about it carefully, anyway?"

"Psh. Hell no. What was there to think about? A perfect woman appears out of nowhere and steals my heart, there's nothing to do but chase her down."

"You're being incredibly sweet today."

"Yeah. It's unnerving me too. So, what do you say?"

She remained quiet for a moment, considering. "Okay. Let's go be on the right side. Just… don't go crazy."

He grinned widely. "Babe. I'm already crazy. You know that."

When they returned to the Room of Doom and Gloom (as it was titled in Red's mind), Elizabeth gave Nuala the news. "Okay, you can borrow him. But try to give him back in one piece."

She nodded solemnly. "I shall try."

"So how does this bonding thing go?" Red asked them collectively. "We don't have to hold hands or hug or anything, do we?"

Airmeid gave him a deadpan stare, the elven equivalent to rolling one's eyes and huffing audibly. "No. You do not. It has to be his doing, but he has been bereft of his connection to Nuala for so long, he will likely accept any mind open to him."

"Then, how do I let him know my mind is on the market?"

Nuala gestured for he and Liz to sit around the sickbed with herself, Abe, and Airmeid. They made an unconscious protective circle around Nuada. "Through your prolonged contact with Abraham, you are already conditioned to accept such links, albeit of a more temporary sort. This will be much like when he shares his thoughts with you, but constant."

"Constant? Isn't that a little, I don't know, intimate?"

"It is. But I shared a bond with him for most of my life; he will respect your wishes, will not speak into your mind unless necessary or he is invited, and he knows when to stop listening. He will be at greater risk of you invading his privacy, rather than he invading yours."

Red took a deep breath to gather his resolve, then said, "Let's do this. Walk me through it."

"Close your eyes," Abraham directed. "It will be easier that way, and spare you some disorientation."

Liz slipped her hand into his and gave it a squeeze. He closed his eyes; in the darkness that remained, he could feel her burning next to him. Slowly, he became aware of a tugging, the sensation of a webbed hand on his forearm, and the smell of water. A blue glow led him nowhere, moving forward in a place where there was no motion, time, or direction. Nauseous from the sensation, Red was very glad he had his eyes closed as he most likely would have been violently ill otherwise. He could faintly hear the blue glow murmuring to itself, which was weird until he realized that it was Abe _and _Nuala. He wondered if he and Liz would ever be a single glow-y thing together. Maybe they already were.

The familiar murmuring faded under another kind of sound; a thousand whispers and fitful groans layered over each other in a hundred languages, but there was no glow to be its source. The void that was not dark and not light was whispering wordless tales of misery, the sound building like a wave, the whispers becoming a unified wail before it washed out again, leaving a profound emptiness behind which made all the world seem small with its expanse. Despair.

"You've been listening to this since we went back to the States?" he wondered aloud to Nuala.

_It was more distressing when he was silent._

He tentatively felt his way in the void until another mind found his. It was uncertain and weak, but clear as a forest pool-- like the eyes of his sons when they first opened on that first day of life. Not knowing what to do, he reached out and tried to protect that other mind as one might protect a flame with one's hand when lighting a cigarette on a windy day. He breathed on it, and a tiny light flared into existence, amber and guttering in the wind of the voices that whispered and wailed around them. _Is that you? _

There was no immediate answer. One of the whispers became distinct. _Dagda?_

_…? _What the hell did that mean?

Abraham's voice found him. _Oversimplified for the sake of expediency, he wonders if you are his protector._

_Yeah, that's me, pal. _Upon those words, the ocean of noise and horror washed over his head, and he could detect only one other person in the cold waters. He detected a cold, frail hand grasping at his desperately, and grasped back.

When he opened his eyes, he could still feel the hand though it was not actually anywhere near him. Feeling overbearingly protective, he reached out and took the elf's good hand in his.

Airmeid arched an eyebrow, the elven equivalent of out-loud mockery. "'We don't have to hug or hold hands or anything, do we?'" she took it a step further and actually did mock him out loud.

He ignored her, focused entirely on the new world in his mind. There was illness and pain, bitterness and broken pride, a tenacious loyalty to his people, an unending love for Nuala, a will stronger than mountains and as fiery as Elizabeth's temper, and a deep exhaustion and longing for death. He shivered, relinquishing the hand to reach for a blanket and spreading it over the pale prince before he even thought about the temperature in the room.

_This lovely world sings its songs of endurance, of existence, of purity stained by the blood of the pure and the unclean alike, do you heard the songs? Do you hear the lyric chatter of the night-birds and the bats as they live in the cracks of the world made of false stones and false earth and false loves? Do you hear the march of the ants as they dig under foundations of tar and their cries when the rain washes the poison of the humans into their homes? Do you hear the dying swan-songs of the last creatures of races without number, languishing in the dark places and the remote snows and islands unfound by the plague of man? Do you hear them in the deep of the ocean, the last retreats of forests, the last of the wilds? Do you hear the creatures of my forests dying the slow deaths of captivity, oh that captivity of boxes! To be kept in a cage, a cage with no sunlight, no stars, a cage without life or love, a cage void of music, a cage, oh Gods that cage, metal walls and burning lights, freezing and burning and the poison in the blood And They Are Coming To Shout Again And Force Their POISON Down My Throat, Such Poison and a CAGE WHY DO YOU NOT LET ME DIE?_

Red exhaled sharply as the next wave of Nuada's madness washed over him. Willful, he radiated comfort, protection, and righteous anger right back into the waves. _It's okay, brother. No one can hurt you now. Old Red will send them to Hell, first._

_Gods, I know your will. _A… laugh? _You send this Dagdain to carry me away from the battle. My belov'd lives and wishes to bear a child by me though it be not mine. Your creatures sing me back from the veil. This war is not over._

_No, it's not, _Red encouraged. _It's not over yet, Nuada. You have to live._

_Then I suppose I shall. _He laughed again, a mad little laugh. _All that has happened will happen again. Have you seen the sun kill himself and rise anew from his own ashes? This is the way of things. Even if humans kill the very seasons, the earth will still turn and renew, though it be without them and without us. Great circles. Great spirals that lead down into extinction and up from creation. The circle of the fight, the push and pull of forces creates a circle, all things try to be circular; the world teaches us the right path for all things. I am, as the humans say, talking your ear off? _

He gave a mental shrug. _At least when you're being didactical, you're not being completely cracked. Cracked isn't a good look for you._

A full-spirited laugh. _May I tell you a secret? Don't tell my sister. I always hoped you would be on my side. Your fate reads like a Christian tale of eschatology, and it says you will put us all to death, and the world will burn with the hell you release._

_And you want me on your side for that?_

_The world already burns, brother. The world already burns._

_They have to cut on you._

A silence passed between them. _How bad is it?_

_Your arm. They want to take off your arm._

_Left or right?_ When he did not receive an answer immediately, he gave a polite mental tap before rifling through Red's thoughts. _Great Creator…_

He flinched. _Sorry to be the bringer of bad news. I'll be here when it happens. If it hurts too bad, just dump it on me. I can take a lot._

_All that has happened will happen again. Cut it off._

Red opened his eyes and looked to Airmeid. "He's ready. Let's do it."


	7. A Whole Is More Than Sum Of His Parts

Notes: Thank you for the shining reviews. J I had expected six reviews that read exactly: " . " A longish chapter for you all tonight, and I've already started the next, so perhaps you'll have 8 by tomorrow as well. The plot begins to take shape, and we have more hints about Breas.

--

7-- A Whole is More Than the Sum of His Parts

It took a day to prepare; Airmeid gathered supplies to piece his flesh back together, as well as herbs to slow his heart and prevent infection. Just before she returned, she sought to buy a pound of chocolate. The goblin selling the chocolate would not meet her eye; he quickly wrapped it and handed it over, then closed up shop as she walked away. Thinking this odd, she took it back to her house and set it aside on the counter.

"Abraham," she requested, "Nuala tells me you have the ability to see into the past and future of things."

"That is correct," he affirmed modestly.

She brought him the chocolate in its leaf wrapper. "My heart tells me there is something about this which is not what it seems. What is different about it?"

He spread his hand over it and concentrated; the day before, a goblin chocolateer with a shaking hand and great anxiety added no less than an ounce of cyanide to the warm chocolate, and as it cooled added nightshade as well. He marked it carefully and kept it apart, setting it under the counter with the leaves used for wrapping so he could be sure not to sell it to any hapless passers-by. As he looked forward through the object, he caught a half-formed image of a dead Nuada. "It's poisoned," he told her, snapping his hand away from the unpleasant knowledge. "It is poisoned specifically for Nuada."

For the time they were to stay in Scotland, Elizabeth secured a small cluster of rooms over the shops in the market where any of them might go to escape the heavy atmosphere of the healer's house, to sleep, and as vitally necessary, to bathe. The healer's house was considerably calmer, containing only Airmeid, Abraham, and the royal elves. There was a clumsy knock on the door, and in a moment, Red joined them.

"There's a mess of people out front wanting to talk to Airmeid," he reported. "They look angry."

Airmeid frowned; for them to arrive so soon after she returned from market meant that at least one of them followed her. "I'll go outside. Dark the lamps."

Nuala and Abraham moved from place to place turning the oil lamps low; the room darkened considerably, so they could barely see each other. Airmeid gestured for them to stay quiet, and stepped outside. Three angry fomorians waited for her, and behind them two gnomes carrying crates.

"Lady Airmeid," the fomorian wearing an officer's rank on his coat spoke first, officially and without the respect one ought pay to the best healer on the island. "We have reports that you are sheltering a fugitive elf and a human; by the order of the Duke of Midlothian, we are to have access to your place of business to search for these individuals and to take them into custody at once."

The gnomes behind them set down their crates to free their weapon hands, but did not move to draw.

"I have no humans in my shop," she spat with all the disgust she felt. "As for my patient, I treat an elven noble named Nechtan, recently returned to us from the western continent. You _may not _enter my house; if you upset my patient, he could die."

They stared her down. "My lady, it is the order of the Duke that your property be searched. I will follow these orders."

"I will not allow you entry to this house!" she insisted. "It is unacceptable."

"The Duke commands--"

"Then let the Duke come here himself!" she shouted at them. "How dare you disrespect me, who delivered you? I saved your mother's life during the trouble of your birth, and your own when you put yourself in the way of the human road machines. And you--" she pointed to one of the guards behind him. "Your injury when you picked a fight with the goblins at Fezithe's Tavern could have lost you an eye, but for my careful work. Ungrateful children, that you would be rude to me and seek to disrupt the healing of another."

"This Nechtan, what's his injury?" the officer asked, attempting to reveal a lie.

She glared at him sharply. "He has pelin lhaew; there was no healer in the western continent who could cure him, so his family brought him to the High Queen Nuala, who brought him to me."

The fomorians began edging away from the door, clearly put off by the disease in question. "Very well," the officer allowed. "We shall see what the Duke says." Turning, he nearly tripped over a goblin crate. "And what are you lot doing here?"

The goblins did not startle at his tone, but merely stared at them with a casual hatred. "Waiting to get by you all so we can fix the clock upstairs."

The officer kicked the nearest crate savagely as the three stomped away. The crate rattled the sounds of loosely-packed metal, but the kick did more damage to the officer's toe than to the contents. The gnomes smirked and collected their crates, regarding Airmeid where she stood in the doorway. "Honoured lady, if you will allow it, we will pass you to the room upstairs to fix your neighbour's clock."

"You arrived in a timely hour," she told them, shoving her anger aside.

"Don't let that lot rattle your gears, ma'am," the second gnome told her. "They're just cogs in the great machine."

In spite of her newly-fouled mood, she smiled at their cleverness and stepped inside, relighting the lamps as she went. They followed her into the main room and set down their crates, quickly opening the lids and removing the contents.

"Danji, Creidhne!" Red greeted. "How are you?"

They nodded to him, arranging the goods they brought on the tops of the crates. "Well enough; did you take our advice?"

"I did," he confirmed with a confident nod. "It's brought me a world of trouble so far, but I couldn't do any less."

Danji grinned and nodded. One crate contained many silver-wrought parts, gears, plates, screws, springs, and a bag of silver working tools; the other contained a hooded crimson robe with silver stars detailed at every hem and cuff, a pair of black boots, some warm blankets, and good food. Last from the second crate was a block of chocolate.

Creidhne busily began measuring Nuada's right hand, watched curiously by both Red and the prince. Danji carried the chocolate to Airmeid. "Had to send my little ones for this. I didn't think anyone would be cruel enough to poison little ones."

She took it gratefully and rewarded him with a kiss on the forehead. "You act bravely and with great loyalty to your prince," she praised him. She offered the chocolate to Abraham.

With a short observation into the object's past, he approved. "Not poisoned."

"What's the chocolate for, anyway?" Red wondered. "I'm guessing you wouldn't go to all this trouble for a snack."

"Snacks are serious business," Danji informed him. "But no."

"Chocolate is an elven painkiller," Nuala explained. "The more pure the chocolate, the stronger the effect. A brick like that one, properly administered, will last for a week."

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh. Good idea." He couldn't wait to hear how crazily Nuada would rant on drugs. Er, chocolate. Elf-drugs. Whatever.

Airmeid gestured to Nuala. "Will you prepare a cup of this?"

Nuala complied, moving to work beside the healer. Abraham assisted Airmeid in setting up a table in the back of the room, hanging faerie lights to provide clear and smokeless illumination, and wiping down the surfaces with herbs and rainwater to clean it of any lurking infection. Finally, Airmeid gestured for the patient. Red helped Nuada to his feet, balancing him as he stumbled the few steps from the cushions to the operating table. He climbed upon it and sat on his own power, understanding exactly what was happening around him.

As Nuala approached him with the mug of molten chocolate, he met her eyes and held them. His hand brushed hers intentionally as he took it, and again when he passed back the empty mug. "Muinthel, im melion nin. Sen naeg bronion an nae."

Her hands shook as she removed the cup from his grasp, and she leaned forward to place a kiss on his cheek. "Muindor, hannon nae."

He lay back on the table, watching as Abraham and Airmeid secured straps around his ankles, above his knees, over his chest, and over both arms just below the shoulder. The chocolate was having a very pleasant warming effect on his insides, and he could feel every muscle left in him relax. He actually smiled as the healer passed her palm over his face, forcing him into sleep.

Red stood at the head of the table, his good hand resting on the pale prince's right shoulder. Nuala stood to the left, conflicted; a part of her felt that she should be waiting upon her brother in his weakness, but she had given up that role along with the bond between them, hadn't she? Abraham stood at her side, an arm around her waist supportively.

Airmeid drew a long blade of elven silver, marked from hilt to tip with runes of speed and fire; she passed her hand over it and spoke, "Naur nedh tinc, echo," and the runes glowed red. The heat of the marks spread out until the blade glowed an orange -yellow. She swung it up with a prayer, then down upon the prince's arm with terrible precision.

Nuala cried out in terror, burying her face in Abe's shoulder. Abe closed his eyes and used his hand to shield hers. Red bellowed in pain as the sensation of stabbing pain tore through his stone arm; no blood appeared, and his arm did not fall away as he half feared it would, but a scored circle wound around the stone, marking where his prince was cut. Louder than Red's shout, the prince screamed into his mind as the pain bit right through the sleep magic.

Airmeid held the blade in place to burn closed as much of the wound as possible, then withdrew it, deactivated it, and set it aside. She pressed a cooling salve to the wound and bandaged it in place. "I am sorry, my prince," she whispered.

He managed a tiny smile though his brow was still beaded with sweat and knitted with pain. "I thank you, Grandmother Healer."

She mopped a spare cloth over his brow, then turned away to clean the amputation blade.

When Red thought to look around again, he noticed that the gnomes had gone. They left, on the sickbed in the middle of the room, a prosthetic arm of gleaming silver, seams hidden beneath plates, the surface fairly crawling with runes and marks.

--

With the mangled limb, the last of the human poisons left Nuada's body. The skin of his arm closed over with astonishing speed-- in two days, what had been a bloody stump was covered with powder white flesh-- and his madness quieted in Red's mind. He spent more time awake every day, and finally began to put on weight. Red and Nuada had excellent mental conversations as the elf stretched and walked circles around the room.

_They know you__'__re here, clearly, or they wouldn__'__t__'__ve sent those three assholes to search the place._

Nuada agreed. _They seem to have backed down for the time being. The Viscount of Maynooth is an old friend of mine, I can hide there if necessary._

_We, _Red corrected. He was awarded with a smile of gratitude.

_We, then. It is not so very far from where you live now, and it is a beautiful countryside like most of my island. _

_And once you__'__re strong, we__'__ll return and dispose of Breas._

Silence was his answer.

_Nuada, you have to get rid of Breas. That throne is yours._

_No, I don't. All I have to do right now is stay alive and help Nuala to bear a child. If that child is a male, he may chose to challenge Breas for the throne. If that child is a female, then Breas will remain king. _

_Breas is a bad king. Everyone says so._

_He is a strict king._

_He taxes the poor and protects the rich. He turns schools into markets. His guards are bullies to the Fae. Without invading Iraq, I can't figure on how he's any better than the human guy in charge of the States just now._

_Breas is king, not I._

Red clenched his stone hand with a quiet crunching sound. _The people want you to lead them._

_And I will. Any who wish to fight the humans may follow me in that war. But I am not king._

_You should be._

Negative. _Elven kings must be sound of mind and body. I am hardly either._

Resistance. _That silver arm would make you sound in body, and I am here to keep you from being crazy, so you are sound in mind._

_My duties lie elsewhere._

And the conversation would be over. It was one they repeated three times before the first week was out. In the second week, there was another attempt to poison the prince. In the third week, an assassin crept boldly into the healer's house when only Red and Nuada were home.

The corpse of the assassin was thrown into the streets and carried away by the guard, who pretended to know nothing of the crime.

After the bit with the assassin, Elizabeth insisted on taking the boys home. Red agreed wholeheartedly, promising to follow when Nuada was strong enough to travel. Nuala and Abraham took over the rooms over the market, and in the dead of night when the faerie lights in the street went out, Abraham would go to the healer's house, and Nuada would join his sister in his place.

The first time had been unbearably awkward. Abraham and Red sat together with a couple of pitchers of gnomish lager to share between them, and pretended not to feel what they felt from the other side of their links. For the first few moments, it hadn't been anything other than strange, Abe feeling ghost sensations in parts he didn't have, and Red clenching his jaw and pretending he didn't feel ghost sensations in parts he definitely did have. Abe retreated to the water closet, and Red tried his best to salvage his dignity, but the effect of the links was incredible; pleasure passed between Nuada and Nuala by virtue of the experience itself, then from Nuala to Abraham, which intensified the experience, and from Nuada to Red, which flowed back across the link. The mental bonds effectually quadrupled the experience for all parties, even the ones not actually having sex.

When Abraham stumbled weak-kneed from the water closet almost an hour later, Red was still sitting with his back to a bookshelf, breathing heavily. "So," he asked his more polite friend, "was that good for you? Because it was good for me."

Propriety dictated that Abe sputter indignantly, but then he gave it up and slumped down to sit next to Red. "Elven stamina, it seems, extends in to all aspects of their physiology. Fascinating."

He laughed out loud. "You said it, Blue."

"Though that was one of the most disturbing experiences of my life, it must be said that the act of mating is indeed more enjoyable for the female."

"Really?" he wondered. "That's a little disappointing."

A polite knock, then the door opened and Nuada slipped in on weary ghost feet.

"Hooah, brother!" Red hooted drunkenly. "GET IT. High five, man, that was awesome."

Nuada scowled at them, then sighed tolerantly. "I suppose it would have been impossible _not _to listen to any of that, even if you had tried."

"I tried," Abraham swore. "By Whitman, Poe, and Faulkner, I tried."

"Did you just swear by American poets?" Red wondered.

"I _am _drunk. I'll swear by whomever I please."

"I suppose that's fair."

Nuada rolled his eyes, and left them to their brotherly devices.

So it continued for every night that week. It was long after the pulses of pleasure and heat stopped reaching them that Nuada returned to the healer's house, receiving wary and sharp looks from Abraham as the blue man departed. Red offered him an inebriated high-five every night, grinning obnoxiously. After Nuada investigated the meaning of the gesture, he began to return it, unable to contain his own amusement at Red's will to congratulate him at being able to produce sperm. It was a crude human custom, but it was a funny one. The last day of the week, he simply did not go.

Nuala conceived; as soon as she knew it, both Abraham and Nuada knew it, and as soon as Nuada knew it, Red knew it. The demon, of course, took this to be an occasion for wild celebration. He packed everyone into the rooms over the market, purchased three bottles of elven mead, two crates of gnomish lager, and a barrel of troll beer. He even ordered half a dozen pizzas from the human world, paying over his cell phone with the credit card he never returned to the BPRD. He invited the families of Creidhne and Danji, a quartet of musicians Danji knew, Airmeid, and their landlord who owned the rooms.

The party was amazing and lasted well into the wee hours of the morning, eventually ending when the guard showed up to issue a complaint about the noise and a formal order to disperse. Upon the arrival of the guards, a drunken Nuada and some of the gnomes hid in the wardrobe. If the guards had actually made it up to the rooms, they surely would have detected them despite their hiding place.

"Why aren't you wearing your new arm, your majesty?" Creidhne demanded, the back of his head crammed next to Nuada's left buttock and the back wall of the wardrobe. "I worked hard on that, you know."

"I don't want a new arm, thank you," he declared, managing to weave even though he was pressed up against the side wall of the wardrobe. "And don't call me Majesty, Breas is king."

"Bre-ass is a shit-eating ten-titted sheep-sexing tax monger, and he hates us all. He's no king; he's a despot. I hope he gets the Lower Region Itchies from one of his courtesans."

"Maybe we could plant a courtesan with the Itchies in the royal court," Danji suggested, voice muffled by rows of coats. "That'll get him, surely so it will."

"Aye! But where will any of us find a courtesan with Itchies? Surely _we _would never know such a lass. Say, my lord, do _you _know of any such fair but infested creature?"

Nuada scowled loudly enough the gnomes could fairly hear his facial expression. "Insolence! If I had my spear upon me, you would know respect!"

"You'd have to wear that silver arm to kill us proper, so you would!" Creidhne declared triumphantly.

With a wordless shout of bruised pride, Nuada kicked the door of the wardrobe open and chased the gnomes into the room, reaching out his handless arm to snatch at them and realizing too late his mistake. He stopped his chase, gazing dejectedly at the end of his right arm.

Danji and Creidhne stared back at him from just beyond it. "Are you ready to accept our gift, Dead Prince?" Danji asked soberly.

He hesitated, then nodded once.

Creidhne retrieved the limb in question from a bag beside the door. He held it up reverently in both hands.

Nuada took it in his good hand and slipped the end of his arm into the sleeve of it. Automatically, with the silver surety of gnomish engineering, it fastened itself securely to him and bent itself to his will. He moved each finger individually, then all of them together, rotated his wrist, then looked past it to his loyal gnomish followers. "Now, where were we? I believe I was about to soundly trounce you both for your impudence and crude implications!"

They grinned widely and disappeared into the crowd of the guests.

Red re-entered the room, having sent the guards away. "Alright everybody, pack it up! Police said so."

A noise of disappointment elicited from all corners of the room; in fifteen more minutes, the only people in the room were Red, Blue, Nuada, and Nuala. Nuala, as the only sober party, mother-henned them into a clean place to sleep; she curled up with Abraham on the bed, and Red and Nuada sprawled out on the floor with blankets they never would've sought themselves.

_Something bothering you? _Red wondered as the others drifted to sleep.

Nuada considered it, staring shiny-eyed at the wooden rafters. _If, when Elizabeth told you she was with child, she then asked you to let another man be their father, would something have been bothering _you?

_…Good point. But Liz didn't ask me that before we started having sex. Nuala did._

_Point stands, I've fathered a child that will know me as uncle._

_Probably better it knows you as uncle, rather than uncle _and _daddy._

Nuada conceded this, but Red could still feel the wistful mood of his bondmate. _Our father was not a good father. He was a good elf, and a just king, but he was not a good father. He spent time with us only to teach us and scold us; after we reached an age where we could speak our minds, he no longer knew what to do with us. By the Great Creator, no child of mine will grow up that way._

_Abe will do right by any child of Nuala__'__s, _Red promised. _He__'__s a good man. Fish-man. Jethyo sapien. Whatever._

_Still, I__…__ I want to be there as my child grows up. I want to teach him or her to walk and speak, to read, to think, to live with dignity and fight for the Great Mother of us all; to be brave as well as wise, and more than anything I want my child to be happy. I want him or her to have a better life than Nuala or I had. I want my child to be whole. Dagdain?_

_Hm? _he wondered, long accustomed to his new nick-name.

_Do you think Nuala will allow me to watch over our child?_

He seriously considered lying; but as soon as he thought about his answer, he felt hot tears sting his eyes, though his eyes were dry. _No. I don't think she will. But you'll do it anyway, won't you?_

_Of course. What kind of terrible parent do you take me for?_

_One that has sex with his sister?_

The tears were gone. Nuada rolled over and playfully thumped Red in the stomach with his silver hand.

"Oof!" he wheezed, unprepared for the blow despite his mental connection with his attacker. "Hey!"

--


	8. Bonus: Elven Painkiller Recipe

-1**Bonus Prize:**

**Elven Painkillers**

**Ingredients:**

2.5 cups wholemeal flour (Do NOT offend your lord's sensibilities with your bleached human filth!)

.5 teaspoon baking soda

.5 cup butter, softened (margarine acceptable only when lactose intolerant)

.5 cup packed brown sugar

.5 cup granulated sugar

1 cup confectioner's sugar (powdered sugar)

.5 teaspoon vanilla extract / essence

1 large egg

4 tablespoons dark unsweetened baking chocolate (powder)

1 ounce dark chocolate of at least 60 cacao

In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, baking soda, powdered baking chocolate, and .5 cup granulated sugar. In a larger bowl, combine butter, brown sugar, confectioner's sugar, and vanilla extract. Beat until homogenous-looking. Add the egg, then beat until homogenous-looking again. Add the flour mixture to the larger bowl a few spoonfuls at a time, mixing completely with each addition. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Farenheit, because you're about to need the oven. Crumble the dark chocolate into the mixture, place the mixture in the freezer for 5 minutes (or until the oven is preheated). Remove the mixture from the freezer; place rounded chunks of dough on an ungreased baking sheet in a size that makes you happy-- the smaller the cookie, the more evenly and faster it will bake. The larger the cookie, the more likely the middle will be all gooey. Bake until they look done (or, about 8 minutes). Please note-- if you wait until they look completely dry on top, they will be overdone.

If your painkillers appear to be burning around the edges faster than in the middle, lower the temperature of the oven by 25 degrees Farenheit and start again.

**For my Swedish interesting-character-who-talks-to-me: **

.5 teaspoon is equal to approximately 2.5 mL

.5 cup is equal to approximately 118 mL

1 cup is equal to approximately 237 mL (trust me on that one)

5 tablespoons are equal to approximately 59 mL

1 ounce is equal to approximately 30 grams

375 Farenheit degrees are equal to approximately 190 Celsius degrees

Next chapter tomorrow. I'm going to eat these cookies and pass out. Hopefully, I will wake with both my arms!


	9. The Fair Trade Agreement

-1Notes-- Sorry, readers. Work has been insane… especially after I overdosed on those elven painkiller cookies.

They're a bit better if you use more baking soda, and add more dark chocolate bits. The shorter you cook them, the more cake-y they are, and the longer you cook them, the more the sugar burns into carbon and makes them chewy (much like burning a marshmallow).

In any case, here is a short chapter. You all deserve it for being so patient!

8 - The Fair Trade Agreement

They lingered in Edinburgh only a week more, then Danji arranged for their travel to Ireland via boat. In the dead of night, they loaded into a taxi driven by a goblin under a glamour-- though, you'd hardly be able to tell, so ugly the illusion was. They climbed from the car and boarded the tiny boat, Abe hovering around Nuala protectively. Nuada kept a sharp eye on his sister, but Red's influence and his lingering physical weakness held him back.

"You and Abraham should come and stay with me in Maynooth," Nuada told them as the boat approached the darkened shore. "It will be safer there, away from Breas."

She denied him this. "Breas knew I travelled to the states to seek a father for my children. He does not know who that father is, so the child is safe. You are the only threat to his rule, so it would be more dangerous to stay with you." She gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek, an open mockery of their former intimacy. "If Abraham or I feel there is anything amiss, we will leave immediately and with great secrecy, and join you in Maynooth."

_Feel, _he spat mentally. _We are twins, yet why am I the only one of us that can feel _and _think?_

_Sounded like she was thinking. Sure you don't have you and her mixed up? _Red cautioned.

Nuada scowled more deeply than usual, but conceded the point.

When they stepped off the boat, the twins did not speak to each other. Red and Abe filled the gap.

"Are you certain you do not wish to stay awhile with us?" Abraham offered, though he already knew the answer.

"Nah. We're headed south to Wicklow to meet up with Liz and the boys, then I'm escorting His Surliness Silver-arm to Maynooth. The family and I might meet up with you later though."

"We look forward to it," he assured him politely, then they split up, Nuala and Abraham meeting up with a group of guards in the Dublin underground. Nuada and Red were meant to hide at the port for awhile, until anyone who was watching Nuala would be long gone; then, they were to make their way south on the river.

After Nuala and Abraham had disappeared through a door glamour'ed to look like an electrical cabinet, Red turned to his bondmate. _So we're following them, right?_

_Are you completely daft? Of course we are. _Nuada waited until he felt his sister's attention turn to the journey ahead of her, then slipped through the cabinet door.

Red stood outside for a moment, staring at the passageway. "Uh, hey pointy-ears. There is no magic in the world that says I'm going to fit through that door."

Nuada grumbled.

It was impossible to travel undetected in the Dublin underground; its inhabitants were as watchful and forward-speaking as their above-ground neighbours, and twice as enthusiastic about the return of the Dead Prince as their Scottish counterparts. Many times they were approached, but were able to dodge out of view to explain their need for stealth to those who approached them. Other fae began to form a crowd around them whereby they could walk undetected, surrounded by gnomes, goblins, hobgoblins, Halflings, sprites, brownies, leprechauns, dwarves, a small green field troll, a banshee, and a low-elf walking three barghest. Whenever a king's guard approached and demanded to know what they were doing, someone in the crowd would inform them that Her Majesty the High Queen Nuala had returned, and they were going to have a look.

A sylph floated along with them, invisible but whispering to them of the path ahead, the number and locations of guards, and anything else he (she? Impossible to tell) thought useful. Constantly it whispered questions, 'Have you returned to take the throne? Is the red demon your vassal now? Is there an army behind you? You may need an army. Your Highness, would you like me to collect an army?'

"No," he answered once, but firmly.

The sylph floated along anyway, brushing his hair from his eyes, making light his steps, and bringing him scents of the tunnels. The crowd began to slow as they approached the grand, high-vaulted chamber that was the underground entry hall of the Grand Palace of Bethmoora. 'Duck,' the wind spirit advised.

Nuada clapped a hand on Red's shoulder, dragging him down as he ducked. _Silence. Do not even think._

Red froze, listening for danger. Instead, he heard Nuala's gentle voice ring through the cavern. The effect was very royal.

"Bethmooran's, I thank you for your greeting and this unexpected parade."

Nuada stifled a laugh.

She continued. "You will be pleased to know that I travelled safely on the North American continent and have returned; I will stay no less than three years, as Lord Abraham and I are expecting a child."

A cheer broke out from the crowd. It sustained for almost a full minute before she smiled widely and raised her hand to quiet them.

_Three years is a lot of maternity leave,_ Red noted.

_She is telling them she intends to govern from Dublin for the next year, then take her leave to rest. Elven women do not work or travel during the last two years of pregnancy. After all, they are not human animals, made to bear so quickly and instantly return to work. I am surprised human _larva _do not gain their feet moments after birth, like gazelle. _He sniffed disdainfully.

Red filed that information away for later. _If Liz had to carry the boys for three _years _she might've killed me._

_Your Elizabeth _is _human. An unusual human, but still, a human._

_Don't start that again, _he warned.

Nuada snapped his fingers and pointed at the front of the crowd. _Don't get your undergarments all bound up._

Red desperately wanted an excuse to punch Nuada at close range, but there was none. He grumbled and turned his attention back to Nuala's speech just in time to catch the end of it.

"We retire happy with the knowledge that you have been well in our absence. Never hesitate to communicate your grievances to the court, and I will never hesitate to do right by you when possible."

Another cheer, and the crowd milled around them.

'She is leaving the steps and going inside the palace,' the sylph reported dutifully. 'Shall I follow?'

"Find me a way that I can follow," he told the sylph.

_Talking to invisible people is the first sign of insanity, Silverhand, _Hellboy informed him, knowing perfectly well that there was a wind spirit whispering to him.

Nuada cut a rude gesture at him as the breeze departed. A moment later, it returned and tugged them north along the chamber wall. 'Follow me. There is a panel, then a tunnel that leads to a deadfall. At the bottom of the deadfall is the great underground sea, and in it are many draw points that lead into the castle.'

The prince and the demon marched quickly at back of the moving crowd, stopping at the obstacle that stood between them and the wood-panel walls of the hall proper-- the big, mostly-empty stairs. If they marched right up those steps, they surely would be sighted. A bleach-white elf in black silks and a big red demon in modified human clothing didn't exactly blend in.

'Uh-oh,' the sylph whispered. 'Behind you.'

A feminine voice laughed, and there was the sound of fingers snapping; the sylph dissipated with an annoyed 'hrmph!'

Nuada spun on his heels, eyebrows uncharacteristically high. "Morgana!"

Red raised an eyebrow, too, just to fit in. _I thought we didn't like humans in the underground?_

_We don't. She's no human; well, not originally. She was transformed into a human for being particularly friendly to them. _

_Friendly? _

She smiled at them both and gestured with one long-fingered hand.

_Might as well, _Nuada sighed, and they followed her.

The human-fae was dressed in layered skirts and a silken blouse that showed off a little more than most fae would consider polite; around her waist hung a loose belt, and from that hung talismans, charms, and components for spells. At her wrists were row upon row of bangles, most enchanted, all of them shiny. She clearly took a great deal of pride in her appearance, as she was done-up and made-up to perfection, given the (human) canvas she had. She led them along walls and through alleys, across the high street in plain sight-- though she paused to cast a glamour over both of her charges-- then into a narrow close. Three flights of stairs and several meters of rail-less balcony later, the three of them stood in a little apartment cluttered with a million colourful and magical things. The main room was dominated by a grand table in the centre, the only clear surface in the room; that was in turn upstaged by a great hearth, where burned a smokeless fire under a great black caldron.

"You want into the palace," she bypassed the common niceties of 'hello' and 'how are you' and went straight to the crux of the matter. Red appreciated that in a creepy enchantress. "I can get you there."

"The sylph you so needlessly dispersed was on the case," Nuada told her. "By the by, thank you _ever _so much for that."

"Clymennon couldn't get you past the great stair," she scoffed, "let alone around the inside of the palace."

He sneered openly at her and stared her down. "I used to live there. You may have forgotten. I _am _the crown prince of Bethmoora."

"Not anymore. Now you're only the Dead Prince, and all the king's horses and all the king's men could never put Balor on the throne again. " She giggled cruelly. "Every servant, every courtesan and court minister, every judge and lawyer, every officer and chamber maid in that palace is in the pocket of His Majesty the High King Breas. Your sister takes to the childbed in the very lion's den."

"She trusts him," Nuada observed.

"But _you _do not." At his silence, he continued. "Ah. You would allow him to be king, but not to watch over your sister."

"Abraham is with her," he countered. "He is not the wisest creature in the world, but he is observant. He will keep her."

Morgana rolled her eyes and glided around her abode, plucking withered herbs and vials of chemicals from the wall and approaching the caldron set over the fire. She dumped the herbs into the caldron without preamble, and began uncorking and emptying the vials. "Which is, of course, why you and the demon are following her around, am I correct?"

_She's got you there, _Red noted.

_Shut up, _he snapped. "No. No, I do not trust him. I trust that he will preserve the kingdom, because he wishes to remain king. However, if he wishes to have a child by my sister, her current condition prevents that. And if she bears a male child, then his place as High King is threatened."

"You wish to safeguard your nephew's life and claim to the throne," she noted, tossing the empty vials onto the table in the middle of the room. A puff of crimson smoke rose from the caldron, followed by periodic spurts of white steam.

Red and Nuada glanced to each other momentarily, but gave nothing away. "Yes," the pale prince answered shortly. "I will preserve my kin."

"Then you need in the palace. I can be convinced to get you there."

Red narrowed his eyes slightly. "You put magic on us to get us here unseen-- why didn't you just do that so we could get into the castle? What's with this big show, and bringing us to your little Love Shack?"

She smiled coyly at him. "My mother always told me that a proper lady never does anything for someone unless someone does something in return."

"Yeah-- what do you want?"

Her smile turned from coy to devilish, and her eyes turned to Nuada. "I want a kiss from the Dead Prince."

He rolled his eyes, openly disgusted. "You are too human. Your disguise betrays your real self. Can you not understand what the risks are? Why must you delay us so?"

"Just kiss her and let's get on with it," Red muttered to him.

Nuada pulled a face. "Ugh. Mint first. I have no idea where your mouth has recently been."

She ignored his revulsion at the idea of kissing a 'human,' even a fae one, and sashayed over. Instead of merely kiss him, she shoved him against the wall, pressed herself into him, and, with all the violence and lack of consent inherent in the phrase, face-raped him. Her hands explored every bit of his neck, shoulders, sides, buttocks, then back up his chest to his shoulders again; she made sure to get at any exposed flesh with her nails when she could.

Red's eyes grew wide, then progressively wider with every noisy sound of enjoyment Morgana made. When her hand wandered to between his legs, he politely excused himself to stand outside-- better to be seen by the king's guard than to watch that!

_Don't leave me here! _Nuada shouted angrily into his mind.

_Sorry, N-Skillet, you're on your own. _He felt embarrassing things through the link and desperately tried to block them. The pale prince's body had been conditioned by the regular attention over the past weeks, and was disobeying him entirely.

There was a furious shout from inside. "Remove your hands from my person or I WILL REMOVE THEM FROM YOURS." His shouts were entirely unsuccessful. Finally, there was the sound of a body hitting a wall and sliding to the floor, then the door opened and he gestured for Red to join them.

As he entered, Morgana was dusting herself off-- on the opposite side of the room. "Well, pough. I will never have a chance with you like that again."

"You may place money on that certainty," Nuada snarled. "Now get us into the palace."

She pouted and gestured for them to join her by the caldron. "I will need a drop of blood from each of you." She drew a silver dagger from a sheath hung next to the hearth. "It won't hurt much."

_You go first, _Nuada ordered mentally.

_Me? I have a wife and kids. I'm not going near her. _

He sighed in annoyance and edged his way carefully across the room, keeping a clear path of escape available at all times. From as far away as possible, he extended his hand over the caldron and stared Morgana down as she pricked his finger. Red imitated the prince's behaviour.

"You have nothing to fear from me, demon," Morgana informed him with a smile. "I respect the magic in that ring on your left hand." She indicated his wedding ring with a point of the dagger, then pricked the finger it occupied with the dagger, allowing only a drop to fall into the caldron.

There was no puff of smoke, no explosion, no loud noise; instead, it just seemed like herb soup set to simmer in a big black pot. The enchantress indicated the pack Red carried with them. "One would assume there's a cloak or cape in that pack; the Dead Prince is too thin to travel far without some protection from the elements. Also, I will need your overcoat."

Red glanced at Nuada, who nodded once. He set the pack down and opened it, handing over the crimson cloak given to them by Danji and Creidhne. After a bit of hesitation, he shed his coat and handed it over, careful to take his cell phone out of the pocket.

Morgana wadded both the garments up and chucked them into the caldron, then took a few stabs at them with a long-handled wooden spoon.

"So we're making coat soup?" he stared at her with some disbelief.

_She's enchanting our over-garments to hide us from the view of anyone but those whose blood is in the caldron. So, each other._

_Really? _Red wondered.

_Yes. Really._

_Huh. Cool._

She put the dagger and the spoon back in their respective places, and traded them for an extended set of salad tongs, which she used to fish the coat and cloak out of the caldron. "Take them, put them on, try them out!" she encouraged, but did not seem to be in a hurry to touch them.

Cautiously they did.

_Can you see me now? _Red asked.

_Yes. You? _

_Yep. Her?_

They looked over at Morgana, who appeared to be cleaning her fingernails with the sharpened end of a bone. _Enchantress. Even if she had an attention span, it wouldn't count._

_Guess there's only one way to find out, then._ Red strode across the room, threw open the door, and went outside. It was dark in the close, especially so high and away from the mage lights. Only a few souls were out and about, and none of them looked at him. _Results are in-fucking-conclusive._

Inside, Nuada jabbed a finger sharply at the air in front of her nose. "You took a lot more liberty than a mere kiss."

"I can help you a lot more than just getting you into the palace," she informed him, flouncing over to a map stand. She pulled one from the rest and unrolled it. "Here is a map of the palace. It's nothing special, except that it is the original blueprint plans of Maggrek von Dunsinane, the troll architect who built the place. It has every last detail, including the escape tunnels built in the walls."

_There are escape tunnels? _Nuada wanted to ask, but was too proud and too wise to admit not knowing. "This, I suppose, will do."

She rolled it up again and held it out in the general direction of his voice.

_A magic cloak and a map? This is some real Harry Potter shit. I can't believe this is happening. Ask her for something cooler._

Nuada ignored the voice in his mind. _Let's just leave this place and never admit to ever having spoken to this woman, ever._

_Done and done, _Red agreed as the prince joined him.

They were halfway down the close when a sweet voice called after them. "Have fun storming the castle!"

Nuada reached out of the cloak and practiced his favourite of all the rude human gestures he learned from Hellboy. He hoped with all of his dark heart that she could see it.


	10. Iocaine

-1--

9-- Iocaine

For two weeks, Nuada and Red crept about the palace undetected. They made a few mistakes here and there, knocking into people and muttering 'pardon me' or arguing aloud-- all of which made for some very strange experiences for the staff of the royal residence. They were quite certain the building was haunted anyway, so there was no real fright to be had, much to Red's disappointment. After the first week, they adopted a tiny chamber in the escape tunnels to call home. They each had a pile of blankets; Nuada swiped some cans from the kitchens and smashed them flat with his silver hand, making a tin box to keep mice out of their food. Red then lifted food from the royal pantry. Nothing seemed to phase the kitchen staff, who seemed rather accustomed to things going missing.

Watching over Nuala was Nuada's sole purview. He knew every way into and out of her chambers, every loose floorboard to avoid, every silken curtain that might give away his presence in a breeze-- and that was _before _scouting the rooms. After sneaking around for a couple of days, he managed to procure a fresh set of clothes from his old rooms and some rather cosy socks. 'Fresh' was a term he used rather loosely compared to Red; Red considered fresh clothes to be right out of the dryer. Nuada considered them to have come off the drying line in the last eight centuries.

Abraham's habits were surprisingly acceptable to Nuada's overbearing sense of propriety and protectiveness regarding their mutual bed partner. He doted on Nuala every possible second of the day until he sensed irritation from her, then contented himself to standing watch and reading. He read rather a lot, even compared to most elves, which pleased Nuada. He was also smart enough to stay out of Fae government, not offering any opinion or thoughts unless directly asked, and even then he was wise enough to chose his words very carefully. He deferred to Nuala and Breas in all things.

Breas was more of the issue. He was Fomorian-- a low-elf-- and was shorter and rounder than Nuada thought young kings ought be. He was loud and thought himself commanding, arrogant and thought himself royal, uncompromising and thought himself just, opinionated and thought himself wise, ruthless and thought himself respectable. He was, in short, all things horrible in a king; he did, however, have two working arms and hands of flesh and blood, which clearly made him more fit to be High King.

Clearly.

Nuada intercepted every trinket, every book, every dish, every letter, and every garment that made its way to Nuala. He watched the preparation of her food, haunted the royal mail room, and staked out Breas's personal chambers. Red spent his time wherever Nuada was not, or filching the supplies they needed. After the third week, he made his excuses.

"I have to go home to my wife and family," he told the pale prince as he returned from his night-time turn watching over the queen and his own best friend. "I promised I'd be back by now."

"I understand," was all Nuada said. It was completely true-- they did, after all, share a bond-- but he felt betrayed anyway.

_You'll have a wife and a whole pack of pointy-eared little rug-rats one day too. _Red assured him. _And on that day, call me, because I am going to heckle the ever loving shit out of you._

Nuada grumbled and peeled himself out of his blankets, truly regretting his situation as the cold of the air between the palace walls stole away the heat from his linen-and-goose-down cocoon. He pulled on his shirt, socks, and boots in a hurry, pulled the enchanted cloak around his shoulders, and scurried like a rat through the narrow pathways from his little closet home to his sister's chambers, finding her still asleep. He supposed that living in exile ought to have made him accustomed to such a life, but his body muttered mutinously about warm blankets and good food, about a soft bed in Maynooth and the safety only throngs of loyal soldiers could provide. His time with the humans made him weak, he decided. What had been Guantanamo might as well have been Babylon, for all it had done to make him soft and full of complaint.

He shed that line of thought and dropped into the kitchens, watching like a mother tiger as the cooks prepared his sister's breakfast. As surely as the sun rose in the east, Nuada's suspicions were confirmed. Breas's left-hand guard entered the kitchen and waited, insisting that he take the queen's breakfast to her study personally. He waited patiently for its completion, then took the tray from the kitchen maid and shuffled out into the hall alone. Once down the hall, he dodged into a side corridor and set the tray on the base of a statue. Hands now free, he rifled through his pockets and produced a tiny glass vial containing a clear chemical, and a folded square of parchment. He unfolded the parchment and read the instructions.

Unbeknownst to him, Nuada read over his shoulder. Finished first, he calmly drew his dagger and slipped it through the guard's temples, blinding him; in almost the same moment, he withdrew it and slipped it between the ribs of his back, through into his heart. "I do not bear you any hate," he whispered to the shocked elf in his last moment, "because you are only a soldier doing the bidding of his king. Pass in peace, and know you have died well."

The guard, shocked, fell backwards; Nuada caught him and eased him to the ground. "Prince--?" he gasped in his last breath.

"Aye, my son," he replied, laying a hand over the elf's eyes. Once he'd stopped moving and breathed his last, Nuada arranged him on his back, hands folded over his still heart. Having met the requisite final respects, the pale prince took the vial and the note, set them on the tray, and took the tray to the royal study himself. A quick listen through the door told him it was not empty-- a shame. He hoped to deliver the tray to his sister's desk, leaving the note and the vial on the tray for her to discover. If she and Abraham were the ones in the room, he might have simply marched in, set the tray before them, and announced his heartfelt 'I Told Thee So.' Ah, but the looks on their faces would have been priceless.

However, the room was occupied by Breas and some of his advisors. It would not do to leave the evidence to the enemy, who would just as quickly hide it; Nuada tucked the vial and the note into his pockets, and left the tray outside. He quickly made his way back into the escape tunnels through a gap behind a painting, and hoofed it to his sister's room.

During all this drama of breakfast, his sister awoke, dressed, and was surely on her way to the study for a working breakfast. Abraham lingered behind, enjoying the last few moments of a warm bed.

Nuada had never before envied him so deeply as he did now; he was practically as green as the fish man was blue. He did have work to finish, though. The entrance to Nuala's bedchamber was a stone door-enchanted to obscurity and silence- which opened to a small hollow behind a tapestry. When they were growing up, the hollow made for an excellent hiding place; now, it was more than a game. Nuada pushed aside the tapestry and set the note and vial on the bedside table, right next to a wide-eyed Abraham.

"Who's there?!" he demanded, on his feet with both hands spread wide to better 'see' the room.

"Oh hush." Nuada slipped out from behind the tapestry and pushed back the hood of his cloak, making the grandest of all possible entrances.

"You!" he nearly growled. "How long have you been in the palace? How did you get in here? You're endangering yourself and Nuala! You should be in hiding in Maynooth."

Nuada rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and waited until Abe talked himself out, then stared him down. "I've been here since you returned. I used to live here, you know. Rightfully, I am still crown prince of Bethmoora, so I legally _do _live here. And it would seem a fortunate thing that I stayed." He indicated the vial and note with a sharp look.

Abe, still startled by the sudden entrance into the safe-haven he shared with his wife, cautiously made his way around the bed to the table, making a wide berth around Nuada, who seemed to only be a floating head. He picked up the items in question; once they were in hand, his attention turned to them entirely. "By God!"

"Low dose, and lucky that's all it was. It would not have killed Nuala, but it would have made her very sick. It certainly would have killed our-- y_our-- _child." Nuada crossed his arms under the cloak and waited for Abraham to react. His response would determine anything.

To his credit, Abraham set the vial down and reacted with a stone-cold logic that made Nuada glad his wife had married the blue creature, and not the red one. "She can't know you are here. If she knows, Breas knows."

"Breas will already suspect something is awry when Nuala fails to fall ill after breakfast this morning. He will, in any case, know there is a problem when someone discovers the corpse of his left-hand guard in the hall outside the drawing room."

"Someone will have to take the blame for that without Breas having the opportunity to play innocent about the poison. If I present the poison and the guard is found dead, then I will be suspect of attempting to spot Breas's honour with attempted murder, perhaps in jealousy for not being king myself."

Nuada raised an eyebrow and smirked slightly. "This time at court has made a suspicious being of you," he observed with an obvious note of praise. "Don't present the poison. Breas will be smart enough not to bring it up. Let him know you know, and imply that Nuala knows, as well. It will make him less likely to try anything stupid for now. No one else, however."

"You will, no doubt, be remaining in the palace to continue spying on us?" Abe asked warily.

"I shall."

"And Hellboy, is he with you?"

"Not as of this morning, he had to go back to his family." Nuada stood back on his heels, reaching across their bond for information about his whereabouts. "He is on a train; he left Heuston Station about an hour ago."

"On a _train_?" Blue exclaimed.

"Well yes. He is invisible."

"Oh." He pressed his eyes closed. "Of course."

"This is not too strange for you, I hope?"

Abe chuckled. "Never. Considering who and what I am, it would be foolish to consider anything strange. You came to me because Red is gone, am I correct?"

Nuada nodded once. "Even I cannot be everywhere at all times. I need you to be at her side. I can use my knowledge of the workings of this palace to monitor all of what comes to my sister; posted letters, official documents, any enchantments, food, drink, soaps, down to the linens on your bed. I need you to be at her side, and I need you to make a scene if you suspect she is in danger. Do not trust _anyone_, not the guards, the cooks, the staff, her maids, her physician, _anyone. _No one is to be alone with her."

"Except for me."

He sighed, and conceded. "Yes. Except for you."

"She _is _my wife."

"Indeed," Nuada allowed, the word like chewing tin foil.

"Have you been spying on us while we're together?"

"I could not stomach such a thing. Red took the nightshift."

Abraham made a vague gesture of disgust. "That, possibly, is even worse." Unwanted memories returned unbidden, of waiting with Red in the healer's house while they received sensations from their respective bondmates. Abe wondered if any of them, their experiences limited to certain sides of the equation, would ever know who was the better lover. He almost didn't want to know.

"Whatever. You are going to help, are you not?"

"Yes, of course. What else could I do?"

Nuada pulled the cloak over his head and made for the door. "Let's not have too many of these pissing contests. Your wife is alone in a room with the enemy. I suggest you put on some pants." Abandoning his invisibility for a moment, he slammed the door before Abe could respond. _Ugh. How truly awful. I never suspected it would turn out like this._

_Yeah, _Red agreed from a train many miles away. He received impressions and a few strong thoughts, and knew for the most part what had happened. _It could be a lot worse, though. She could've married King Fatass._

Mentally, Nuada shuddered.


	11. Baptism and the Resurrection

-1Notes: Sorry for the wait. Again, life intervenes. Are any of you readers familiar with Metropolia University in Vantaa, and if so, how would you reckon I should pad my application to their environmental engineering program?

This is the beginning of the end. I don't suspect this will go on much longer, so hold on to your butts.

---------

Chapter Ten-- Baptism and the Resurrection

Abraham and Nuada, despite their soul-deep distaste for each other, developed a working partnership in a hurry. Whenever Abraham left his wife's side, he would proceed to extinguish as many candles along his path as he could. Nuada, whenever he travelled about the palace, would see these darkened candles and follow them back to his sister, where he would stand guard until Abraham returned. He found his job of safeguarding Nuala was significantly easier with Abe on board, though it did lend to his budding lack of discipline; sometimes, he forwent his nightly vigil over them and chose to sleep in the tunnel nearby, wrapped in his blankets and trusting his sharp ears to alert him of any changes on the other side of the wall.

Every few weeks or so, he would intercept some assassin or other outside the royal bedchamber, trip him or her, slam their head against the floor to stun them, then slip a knife between their ribs or through the base of their neck-- depending on the feasibility of each killing stroke, given the physiological differences of each species. He would perform honourable last rites for the poor killer, then drag their body off to the side. Abraham would always awake first, proceed out of the room to check for such things, and alert a servant of the mess. Before Nuala even left her bed, the last traces of blood were gone from the carpet.

By the time Nuala began to show, Breas ran out of assassins. Even amongst his own guard, soldiers would outright refuse to do the job. In polite company, such things were never mentioned, but in the safe companionship of fellows and the bright lights of pubs and the barracks, some dared to remark:

The High Queen married a killer of the highest order.

The guards always stepped out of the way and treated Abraham with the greatest deference, jumping when he moved suddenly and nearly wetting themselves if he ever raised his voice for any reason. When he entered a room, they retreated to cluster around the king protectively, their fear awkward and sharp.

Breas was upset.

Nuada was inconsolably offended. The irony of it was as a kick to the privates-- painful, undignified, and impossible to ignore. Though he told himself, as he surrendered to his two hours of nightly rest, that the illusion was highly useful and would facilitate greater security for his sister, he still had humiliating nightmares about doing battle with a ninja form of Abraham. The injustice was undeniable; another man married his sister, took credit (though not willingly) for his kills, _and _would raise his child. Another man slept in a royal bed, occupied his place at the banquet table, and taxed his people with a heavy hand. He was completely and utterly replaced.

There was no more room in the world for Nuada Silverlance, only the Dead Prince.

He heard the whispering of servants in the corners of the corridors and the kitchens, the news from couriers and the passing comments of courtesans, and all of them seemed to be wishes for their beloved Dead Prince, the one held captive by the humans on a continent across the ocean. He stood in his sister's empty place at court, invisible, as a supplicant from the Tuatha De approached the court and requested leniency in taxation so that he might provide for his family; having been turned out from their property at every opportunity in favour of Fomorian interests, it was difficult enough for the Tuatha De to make a modest living, let alone for the middle and labouring classes. And he yet stood, hard-pressed to contain his anger as Breas sent each supplicant away with empty hands and no relief.

Even in his exile, the voices of the people had not said what they now did. All the world wanted their Dead Prince back, and he finally knew in the pit of his gut that there could be no other way to safeguard his people except as their king.

But there could be no other way to safeguard his sister and his child, except as a ghost.

So he remained the Dead Prince, secretly sneaking royal gold into the purse of any supplicant leaving the palace with nothing to show, destroying signed orders for the requisitioning of property in lieu of payment, and smuggling bread from the kitchens out to the growing crowds of beggars begging on the palace steps. It was so very little, but it was all he could do and still remain his sister's invisible guardian.

Red, Elizabeth, and the boys came to visit once a year for Yule. The first time, Red searched mentally for his bond partner. _You still here, Silver-arm?_

_Of course. Welcome back._

_You sound awful._

_As awful as you look. I shall rest, if you could--?_

_Yeah, pal, sure. Count some sheep, I'm on the job._

And Nuada retired, sleeping longer and more deeply that he could remember sleeping in many years. He did not awake until five days later, when Red departed with his family. _On our way home, brother. You going to be okay?_

_Once, I defeated three score humans while armed only with my wits and a cookpot. This is nothing._

_If you say so. Call if you need me, I'm here._

Nuada didn't have to say that he appreciated the demon's presence-- no words could describe exactly how much. The silence and constant paranoia of the last year was a winter, and there could be no better Yuletide gift than the quiet mind of his companion. He didn't have to say that he needed the extra two days of rest.

Red just knew. He stalled them for an extra two days, taking the boys out into the underground city and even making a couple of appearances aboveground to scare the locals. When he finally left, it was with a great reluctance; he covered his hesitation with a fond grin and hugged his friends closely, wishing he could embrace _all _of his friends. "See you all next year," he promised aloud to Abe and Nuala and silently to Nuada.

Then, it was the harsh routine for another year. Finally, Nuala took to the childbed and all hell broke loose. Nuada called to Red to bring the family, knowing his mind was far faster than any magic or courier that Abraham might send. He stood outside the room as midwives and healers rushed about and servants brought bowls of clean water and stacks of fresh towels. There was certainly no need to be in the room, he was quite sure of that. Abraham was holding her hand, fretting enough for the both of them, while his poor patient sister was heaving away and reassuring her husband simultaneously. The histrionics of the fish man were far more than he could stomach.

It was this luck which put him in hearing range when a courier dashed across the hall and into the High King's drawing room. The hurried footsteps drew him down the corridor, and he heard through the door a more terrible news than he had heard in centuries.

"Your Majesty, the humans are tearing down the entrances to the Edinburgh Underground and packing in the chambers. The Fae there are trapped."

His heart fell through the floor. Creatures he'd known since birth lived in that city; Danji, Creidne, Airmeid, Wink's entire clan.

"We honour Balor's Truce," Breas decided after far too little thought. "When the ruckus dies down, I shall send a crew in to evacuate those who remain and relocate them to the Dublin underground."

Even the courier hesitated. "Is this what I should report, My Lord?"

"It is."

Nuada growled almost audibly, then turned as another set of sounds drew his attention away. At the opposite side of the hall, there the tiny, nearly-silent squeak of a newborn elf. His world seemed to narrow to include that one little sound, and no conversation of humans or paranoia about his sister seemed to matter anymore.

Someone cried, "A beautiful son!"

"Bring him to me," his sister asked. Then again, more urgently, "My child, bring him to me!"

The noise at the end of the hall took a more sinister, confused tone. Amongst the midwives, there were soldiers of the king. Abraham howled indignation and desperate anger, and the sound of a scuffle was clear. The crowd of people cried out in alarm. Someone was making away with the child; that someone, a weathered soldier wearing the king's crest, shoved his way towards the open end of the hall.

Silver sang. It cut away all the noise, the confusion, the years of paranoia, the cramps and chills of sleeping on cold stone, the hatred and the repressed rage, everything shrank back at the end of his spear, everything was cut and fell away. Blood flowed and washed away the sins of silent years in a baptism the likes of which no Christian would ever know. In the end of an instant he stood, cloak cast aside, innocent son tucked securely in the crook of his left arm and blood-tipped spear extended solidly from his right. The remains of a war cry echoed in his ears like a soul escaping from Hell, and it took a moment to realize that he made that sound.

The crowd stood silent, awe-struck.

Breas took that moment to fling open his door and begin to demand what was going on, but found himself at a loss for words when a silver-tipped lance whispered deadly promises in a trail from its home in a villain's heart to its new post inches from the king's throat.

Nuada didn't have to speak.

Breas stepped back compulsively, stopped by the courier standing behind him. The courier's hands locked on the High King's upper arms and held him in place.

"My Lord," the courier acknowledged Nuada over Breas's head.

Nuada responded with the faintest hint of a smile. "_Eochu _Breas," he spat the king's self-granted title with disgust, "by the grace of the Gods and the will of the Great Creator, I am returned to my home and am prepared to take up the mantle of kingship you hold in trust."

Breas hesitated. "M…My Lord… Nuada, we thought you captive, dead--"

"And so I was dead to you, to my family, and to my subjects. But, as you can see, I am alive and well, and have returned. By the by, thank you for the rescue efforts," he added sarcastically.

Abraham shoved his way to the front of the crowd, his temporary reputation as a killer forgotten in light of Nuada's appearance.

"Take your loyal followers, whichever of them I have not yet slain for their attempts on the lives of my kin. Take all your Fomorian and part-Fomorian bastard contingency; I have no use for those who make war on their fellow Fae when greater enemies make war on us. Take them, and remove yourselves from my realm."

Breas, angered, jerked forward to free himself from the courier's hold, but Nuada's blade whispered ever closer to his neck.

"Move again," Nuada dared him, "And give me a reason to kill you." He nodded to the courier. "Escort him from the premises, if you please."

"With pleasure, Your Eminence," he replied obediently and shoved Breas to the side, following with a kind of rough glee.

Nuada lowered his spear point, and the room heaved a collective sigh of relief. Abraham approached him carefully and nodded towards the child, but wisely did not reach out to take him. Nuada walked past him, through the quickly-parted crowd, to his sister's room, where he approached her bed and gently lay their son in her arms.

Nuala held her son close, knowing that in the moments surrounding his birth, everything she wanted for the world was denied. The harshness of the irony made her weep, and she closed her eyes to her brother entirely.

Abraham could only hold them both and pray.


	12. The Way of Fate

The Way Of Fate

----

The changes were immediate. The privileges granted to low-elf Fomorians by Breas were repealed, eviction notices were issued, families returned to their homes, and necessities were distributed to all. Amidst the benevolent work, however, war was taking shape. Forges and bowyers ran fully-staffed eighteen hours of every day in rotating shifts; orders were made for military supplies and boats. Soldiers spent less time in barracks and at ceremonial posts and more time in parade and training. Where there might have been celebration, there was grim determination. Even in the schools and the marketplace there was the understanding that everything was about to change. The fae of Dublin were ready.

Nuada spent his first morning as King fixing the problems left by the old king, and the first afternoon and into the night with generals and tacticians in the war chamber, hovering around maps and figures, determining how best the weak could bring down the mighty.

As soon as she was strong enough to stand, Nuala was at the door of the war chamber, Abe close behind with the child in his arms. "You cannot make this war!" she cried, vehement and upset. She clutched the doorway for support.

Nuada stood and approached her calmly. "You should not be on your feet, sister, you are still weak. Indeed, your Lord Husband does you a disservice in allowing you to be up, and the babe as well."

Abe glowered at him.

"He cannot stop me from standing in your way!"

"You're exhausted and upset. Please, for your sake and that of your child--"

"Do not do this thing," she pleaded as he reached her, his hands on her arms and the stress of the day catching up. "For me. Make peace."

He looked past her to their child. "I have done enough for you. This, I do for those who come after."

She swung at him; by surprise alone was she able to clip him across the chin. "If you came not from the same womb I would doubt the line of your birth. You are too angry, too full of hate, and your hate will kill us all!"

He caught her second swing and restrained her by force. "If I do not do this, we will all die anyway. The time for peace has passed, and all that is left to us is this war. I am more sorry than you can possibly know, that I cannot give you and the child peace. Peace is beautiful, but it cannot be enjoyed without its kin of life and freedom." He kissed her on the forehead, despite her thrashing and protests, then forced her back into the hallway. One arm, he kept wrapped around her; the other, he held out to Abe. "I will keep watch over the child while you attend to his mother. Elven children are very frail in the first days of life, and such stress will only endanger his health. Please."

Abe gazed harshly at the king, but knew he spoke truth. "I will put her to bed, then return for the child." He handed over the tiny bundle with great care, and accepted in return his distraught wife.

"Don't be too long, I fear a war chamber is not the best place for an infant. He should be in his father's arms."

Abe's black eyes widened considerably. Nuada was openly calling him the father of Nuala's son; it was the honourable thing to do, certainly, but was still more than he expected.

Nuada nodded with a sad smile. "Go."

He shuffled the now weeping Nuala back to her room and held her as she cried herself to sleep. Perhaps an hour later, he returned to the war chamber to find the generals departing. Entering, he found the king by himself at the head of the table, sitting slightly hunched and definitely tired, cradling the tiny elf in his arms gently. "Abraham, come and sit with me."

Abe approached the table cautiously, but knew he was in no danger. He took a seat at Nuada's right side.

"This child is the single most important creature in the world, now. I love him more than I have ever loved anyone in all my thousands and thousands of years and I am very glad that he is my son only by blood, and not by right." He waited a beat before continuing, "What I do now, I do for him. I wish to give him a world at peace."

"So you're starting a war?" Abe couldn't help but say.

Nuada smiled sadly. "I will spill every drop of human blood on the planet if it means keeping clean the hands of this child. You will stay here with Nuala and the finest battalion of soldiers, hidden away from all the world. The underground of Dublin will not reveal itself unless the Gods smile upon us and victory is achieved. You will stay and raise this child who will be king, and you will stand regent in his place until he is old enough to rule."

"Regent?"

"I leave in the morning to free the fae citizens of Edinburgh and the streets of that city will run red with the blood of the fallen. If the fallen be fae, then I will be amongst them; my people will not suffer while I sit idly by as my father before me. If the fallen be human, then I will join with the soldiers stationed at Edinburgh and we will free every town and city in Scotland from the humans, then all the isles, then all the world until we be stopped and I be dead."

"You cannot win this fight."

His grimace deepened, and he nodded. "I can do naught else but lose it."

"I have lived in their world for years; there is good with the bad. I have hope for them."

"Abraham, do not take offence when I say that you are wrong and that you are young. I have lived thousands and thousands of years, and I saw them climb out of the caves and devour everything they touched and never be satisfied. In their pride and hunger they now reach even beyond the highest limbs of the Father Tree and grasp at the stars. They now destroy what hope my people have of living; tenacious though we are, resilient though we may be, we will never outnumber them nor should we. No creature has ever been so bold as to step beyond their place in the natural way of things and grow so malignantly, so unstoppably, that like a cancer they will kill the body of the world and in doing so kill themselves. So long as I live I cannot allow them to do so. This world does not belong to them." He held his child closer for a moment, kissing his forehead gently and surrendering a tear or two to the occasion. "He will never look upon me. I will be gone before he opens his eyes to the world. He will never know the face of his sire, and I will never know the voice of my son."

"He will know your face," Abraham promised.

----

The next morning, Nuada left Dublin with a battalion of Tuatha De, trolls, goblins, gnomes, Halflings, dwarves, and any other fae that answered the call to arms. Aside from the royal guard, no citizen was required to fight; of the fifty thousand citizens of the underground, thirty-five thousand took up arms and followed the Dead Prince into battle. Left behind were the children, the elderly, the mothers, a battalion of soldiers, and Abraham.

Right after the last of the soldiers left, Hellboy, Liz, and the boys arrived.

They attended first to Nuala, who accepted their greetings with as much composure as she could find in her heart. After the niceties were finished, she openly asked, "Will you go after him?" In the silence that followed, she continued quite solemnly, "You are his bond-mate now. Perhaps he spoke to you of his plans. He is going to Edinburgh to make war on the humans, and he will either die or kill every last human citizen of the city."

"The municipal government is blocking up the Caves and the entrances on the old closes," Abe explained. "Prince-- ahem, King Nuada is going to the rescue of the underground. He… does not plan to return."

"Wait, does this mean--?" Liz turned to Red and grasped his arm. "If he dies, do you die, now that you're bonded?"

Red looked to Nuala. "I don't know. Will I?"

She pursed her lips a moment, then shook her head slightly. "I do not know. You might."

_Hey asshole, you coulda told me you were going to the game. I woulda brought beer._

A few miles away, he felt Nuada smile. _Are you coming along, then? It's going to be messy._

_Well, I'm sure as hell not going to miss my own death._

_So be it. I will wait upon the shore for nightfall to cover our crossing; you have until then to catch up._

Red sighed. "I guess I have to go after him, then. I can't just let him get us both killed."

"Please stop him from starting this war," Nuala pleaded.

He glanced over to Abe, who gave him an unexpected stony look in response. "Abraham?"

"Go after him, Red," he told him quietly. Years of friendship added a silent second order. 'Help him win.'

He looked finally to Elizabeth. "Will you be okay here with Abe and the boys?"

She nodded wordlessly and embraced him, her heart heavy as stone.

---

The Dead Prince entered the city by night, his bondmate and his army following behind. Taken by surprise as they slept, the humans of Edinburgh had no chance. The police, the army-- no one knew what was happening. From Lauriston to Leith, no one understood the knives crossing their throats or the swords through their hearts. No cry lasted long enough to warn the others. The streets ran red with blood as the fae took revenge for centuries of crimes, thousands of souls, and the Dead Prince ran ahead to the Caves.

Nuada and Red smashed down the walls to the Underground and removed rock as fast as they could, stepping into the sickening seven-day-stale air of the tunnels and closes to meet many-score of frightened but largely unhurt fae. Together they climbed up to the street and observed the sickening chaos that remained of the Scottish capitol.

Once the army had reassembled with the survivors of the Underground, they marched out of the city and down to the shore. Bonfires were not lit, but food passed around and songs of mourning were sung for the dead. The mothers, children, and elderly of Edinburgh would travel under the guard of a hundred soldiers to join the underground at Dublin, and the rest of the citizenry would join the army of the Dead Prince. No one celebrated a victory, no boast took wing from any mouth that night.

Hellboy had seen war before. In fact, he'd seen a lot of wars-- World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq… In every war, the soldiers he knew would sing songs about their victories and their battle prowess, their ladies and their homeland. That's what humans did, but not the Fae. To them, the war was not a source of pride, but an act of ultimate failure. Hellboy knew with Nuada's certainty that the Fae would not kill pregnant mothers or the very young, but he was uncertain if this was mercy. It was small comfort to know that the fight sickened Nuada as much as it sickened him.

But he never left Nuada's side. The army made its way across Scotland, splitting into units and committing what was ultimately genocide in city after city, from the highlands to the south of England and from the cliffs of Dover to the point at Holyhead. He knew from television, before there was no more of such a thing, that human society could not wrap its collective mind around what was happening to them. Even when they marched on London, detonating factories and setting fire to the city, newscasters were calling it 'terrorist attacks on an unprecedented scale.'

Bullets and knives often brought down soldiers. On these occasions, the dead would be buried in the countryside or burned if a pyre could be built, holy rites were performed and a funeral was given. The Dead Prince would bid goodbye to the souls of his people and every night he would see them again in his nightmares, and he would know them by name and face. Red saw them, too; too often he awoke to Nuada's screaming. Too often he pinned the noble elf by his arms and held him until he regained his wits and the grief subsided. Nights were long but sleep was short, but Nuada's grief only cemented his resolve; within a month, the British Isles and Ireland were free of the threat of humans.

Nuclear weapons could not destroy them; once finished with a city they abandoned it. Missiles could not target them; they did not have stationary homes. Armies could not fight them; they were impossible to see. No country could keep them out; they were already there. The Gods smiled on the Dead Prince, and humanity lost before they realized there was a fight.

True to his word, Nuada never returned to the underground at Dublin. He returned to the royal seat at Maynooth to regroup for a campaign on the mainland. However, there were messengers awaiting him from every noble house of the Tuatha De. Every message said the same. "The city of ____ at ____ is liberated. The house ____ stands ready with ____ soldiers to do the will of the Dead Prince."

The shock of it took almost a full day to process. His generals tallied soldiers and revised charts. Rather than just the islands, he was studying maps of continents. A few cities still stood: Tokyo, Huandong, Moscow, Mumbai, Helsinki, Houston, Mexico City, and San Antonio. South America, Africa, and Australia were trouble territories, and the Fae had no interest in driving the humans out entirely. Instead, measures were taken to cut off human-dominated areas and destroy any lines of trade or transport in or out.

Nuada was not content to sit at Maynooth, however; he travelled with his army, reinforcing local Fae guerrillas wherever he could. It was after the fight in Houston that he called an end to the fighting. Injured but not fatally, he took a place on a high freeway overpass to watch the rest of the fight. Leaning heavily on the cement barrier separating the traffic lane from a four-story deadfall at the end of the bridge, he watched the last skyscraper crumble to a pile of steel and glass. Gnomes with their explosives were surely enjoying the opportunity to make a mess, at least. Danji would probably be with them. "This is the last fight," he declared quietly. "The other cities, we will leave standing. Six billion, one hundred seventy six thousand, five hundred and twenty-seven souls." He sank to his knees but still watched over the barricade.

Hellboy sat with his back to the sight, hand covering his face, hunched over in shame. "The man I called father was human. Friends. My wife. Oh God…" he pulled his hand away from his face and considered the prayer beads and crucifix wrapped around his wrist. "What have we done, Silverhand?"

"What we were forced to do. It was them, or the world."

"I know, it's just… I wish…" He pulled his knees up slightly and folded his arms over them, burying his face but not crying.

Nuada turned and sat beside him, good hand on his shoulder. "I know."

"The funny thing is, before I stopped you from awakening that damned army, Elizabeth and I met the Angel of Death in the dead city. The Angel said I would bring about the destruction of the world." He chuckled bitterly. "And that Elizabeth would suffer more than anyone. Guess that's about right."

"She is an orphan now," Nuada observed.

"She's been an orphan most of her life. But now it's worse. Will everyone-- will they still accept her?"

"They shall, or my sister will revoke their right to own property," he promised.

"What do we do now?"

He thought about this for awhile, as the sun set somewhere beyond where cars used to drive, joggers used to burn calories, and prom dates used to lose their virginity. "I don't know. The last time this happened, I went into exile for four and a half thousand years. I suppose… You should go back to your wife and boys. I'll wait until you're across the ocean, then you'll lose your link to me."

"Wait, why should-- oh hell no you're not, you slippery little bastard, you don't get to commit suicide and leave me to go completely out of my damn mind all by myself. You're coming with me."

Nuada nodded. "You are right. It would be wrong of me to abandoned you."

A long silence passed between them. The stars came out over the land where there used to be traffic jams and shopping malls, public schools and strip clubs, white supremacists and non-denominational churches. Red sniffed. "I guess you didn't need that fucking army after all."

-----

Author's Note: Boy am I ever sad to see this one end. That is, by the way, why I didn't update forever and a day-- I really didn't want this to be over. However, it's where I wanted it to be; fates are finished, references made, and legends completed. There's where I've thrown my gauntlet, friends; now I look forward to reading what you all write.


	13. Notes on Right and Wrong

**Notes from the author:**

I've approached a few issues in this fiction that hopefully didn't overwhelm the storytelling experience as a whole, but hopefully did make an impression upon you about the injustices of our world.

Some of you may have noticed my references to the prison at Guantanamo Bay, a facility run by the United States government where high profile (usually foreign) prisoners are incarcerated on foreign soil to avoid the United States laws about prisoner treatment and rights. These references are not mistakes. Several months ago, Amnesty International toured the United States, Canada, and the UK with a mock-up of a Gitmo prison cell. This, along with pressure on the United States government by groups like them and by individuals from many nations have convinced our next president, Mr. Barack Obama, to transfer the prisoners from Gitmo to prisons on United States soil and to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. If this happens, this will be an amazing victory for human rights and for the will of the people forcing changes in government and policy. There is, however, rumor that Gitmo is not the only prison on foreign soil operated by the United States government. Other nations operate prisons in the same fashion to avoid their own laws. If you are aware of prisons such as these, write to the government operating them and demand they be closed; all people have rights, whether they be criminals or the law-abiding, rich or poor, man or woman, on domestic or foreign soil, black, brown, white, red, or whatever other colour you can apply to a nationality. Governments and militaries will not simply choose to observe these human rights. It is up to people like us to defend them by word and pen and vote.

Another major issue I approached is the health of the natural ecology in all parts of the earth. There can be no argument to this: humans affect the health of the world. I could rant for hours on green living, renewable power, recycling, conservation, and protecting that which is endangered, and it will do you no good until you decide what you truly believe as an individual and if that belief is worth spreading to others. Is it a human right to destroy what is around us in order to work towards our happiness? Are humans the most important creature on the planet? Do we have more of a right to be here than the ant or the anemone, the vulture or the violet? What gives us the right to play god with our earth, and even if we have the ability, should we exercise it? Before you can effectively change the world, you must know the answer to these questions beyond all doubt. You must be able to convince others of these things, for the actions of one are meaningless in this world.

Fight hard. Protect those who cannot protect themselves.

-- Super Lizard

PS-- Quit bowing at me, it's just fanfiction. ;)


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